Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/KT)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Starting editor from within perl script
Message-ID: <1990Sep22.144126.21099@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 22 Sep 90 14:41:26 GMT
References: <1990Sep21.190641.9221@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/KT)
Followup-To: comp.lang.perl
Organization: North Coast Public Access *NIX, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 28

As quoted from <1990Sep21.190641.9221@cs.rochester.edu> by roche@cs.rochester.edu (James Roche):
+---------------
| 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$$`;
+---------------

The whole point of `` is that, as in a shell, the standard output and
standard error of the program are trapped and returned to Perl as a (very
large...) string (or list, depending on context).

Try the following instead:

	system '/usr/ucb/vi', "/tmp/postnews$$";

(Splitting it up like that means that the overhead of a shell is unnecessary,
but you *must* use a full pathname for the editor.  Use a single string if you
can't guarantee the existence of a full pathname.)

++Brandon
-- 
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