Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!iwarp.intel.com!news
From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Rank beginners question
Message-ID: <1991May2.191645.23036@iwarp.intel.com>
Date: 2 May 91 19:16:45 GMT
References: <1991May2.173518.4194@cs.ucla.edu>
Sender: news@iwarp.intel.com
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Lines: 44
In-Reply-To: frazier@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Greg Frazier)

In article <1991May2.173518.4194@cs.ucla.edu>, frazier@oahu (Greg Frazier) writes:
| Hi-howdy -
| 	I am a beginner perl hack (obviously).  I am trying
| to get my script to manipulate some files in my directory.
| This works
| 	@foo = `ls *`;
| but this does not work
| 	@foo = `ls ~frazier`;
| the error msg is
| 	~frazier not found
| 
| I do not understand why the '*' gets expanded correctly but
| '~frazier' does not.  BTW, I am running cshell
| ($ENV{'SHELL'}=/bin/csh).  The man page for csh indicates that
| '*' and '~[username]' are both examples of filename expansion,
| so I would have assumed that if one was happening, the other
| would too.  I have tried various quotes and escapes to no
| avail:
| 	@foo = `ls '~frazier'`;
| 	@foo = `ls \~frazier`;
| 	@foo = `'ls ~frazier'`;
| 
| Any and all responses appreciated.  And, no, I do not want
| to use $ENV{`HOME`}, 'cuz I'd like other people to be able
| to run this script (and the files are in my directory).

Backquoted strings are always interpreted with /bin/sh (thank gawwd!).

You'd need to do something like this:

$_ = 'ls ~frazier'; # suppose you want to execute this...

s#~(\w*)# (@a = getpwnam($1 || $ENV{'USER'})) ? $a[7] : $& #eg; die $@ if $@;
	## this replaces all the ~refs with what they really are.
	## warning... it can get carried away, but it's a good quick cut

@foo = `$_`;

print "Just another Perl hacker," # with not quite enough time to be clever :-)
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III      |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\=Cute Quote: "Intel: putting the 'backward' in 'backward compatible'..."====/