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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Starting editor from within perl script
Message-ID: <9610@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 21 Sep 90 19:22:44 GMT
References: <1990Sep21.190641.9221@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 22

In article <1990Sep21.190641.9221@cs.rochester.edu> roche@cs.rochester.edu (James Roche) writes:
: I'm trying to write a replacement for Pnews to handle some special
: local requirements. I am having trouble getting an editor to start
: from within the perl script.
: 
: I have tried:
: 	`/usr/ucb/vi /tmp/postnews$$`;
: 
: A ps shows that the editor was started, but it doesn't display anything.
: I can type input and it all works, but nothing gets displayed.
: 
: What's the trick to starting an interactive program from within a perl
: script.

Don't use backticks.  They eat the stdout of the subprocess.

Say this:

	$EDITOR = $ENV{'VISUAL'} || $ENV{'EDITOR'} || '/usr/ucb/vi';
	system "$EDITOR /tmp/postnews$$";

Larry