Sourcing other Scripts in perl script

Question

I have started learning Perl scripting today because of my project.

Let me first define you my project so that you have clear image what I wanted to do .

I am scripting for the test run of applications. When my Script will execute it will take 3 arguments from user and then it will source the *.ini file for the application . after sourcing that file it this script will execute another perl script from a different location and this second perl script will give me two text files in (lets say) folder1. and files will be test.date1.txt and test.date11.txt after then my script will call another perl script from different location for the same application and this third perl script will also give me two different text files(test.date2.txt and test.date22.txt) in different folders. Now I want to rename the files in both 1st and 2nd folder 1st run results 2nd run results resoectively and I want to compare what are the differences.

Till Now I have assigned my input arguments and if user don't give the arguments then what error to show to the user , and also I have read about the comparison on online tutorial and made a little comparison code like this :

use Text::Diff;

my $diffs = diff 'test.date1.csv' => 'test.date2.csv';

print $diffs;

I am stuck at how to source my *.ini file , and then run my other perl scripts ? Can anyone help me with this. It would be a great help for me .

Note: I started scripting today, so sorry if I made a silly mistake any where defining the project

Answer 1

ok.. i think i got it..

you mean the bash shell built-in command

source

that executes the content of the file passed as argument, in the current shell

. filename [arguments] source filename [arguments]

to reload your bash setting for current running bash you can do

source ~/.bashrc

or

. ~/.bashrc

Link

which source

man bash

Read and execute commands from filename in the current shell environment and return the exit status of the last command executed from filename. If filename does not contain a slash, file names in PATH are used to find the directory containing filename. The file searched for in PATH need not be executable. When bash is not in posix mode, the current directory is searched if no file is found in PATH. If the sourcepath option to the shopt builtin command is turned off, the PATH is not searched. If any arguments are supplied, they become the positional parameters when filename is executed. Otherwise the positional parameters are unchanged. The return status is the status of the last command exited within the script (0 if no commands are executed), and false if filename is not found or cannot be read.

maybe good to know: Is there a difference between “.” and “source” in bash, after all?

---

well, to answer your question.. you are looking for one of these:

1. system() you want to execute a command and don't want to capture its output

2. exec you don't want to return to the calling perl script

3. backticks you want to capture the output of the command

4. open you want to pipe the command (as input or output) to your script

---

1. example system()

   system("command arg1 arg2 arg3");
   

   or

   system("command", "arg1", "arg2", "arg3");
   

2. example exec

   exec("ls -l");
   

   keep in mind exec() executes the command specified and never returns to the calling program, except in the case of failure because the specified command does not exist AND the exec argument is an array.

3. example backticks

   $result = `command arg1 arg2`;
   

   or even

   @result = `command arg2 arg2`;
   

   ..command is executed and the output of the command is returned to the calling script

   try

   $result = `command 2>&1`;
   

   to get sterr as well as stdout

4. example open()

   open(PS,"ps -e -o pid,stime,args |") || die "Failed: $!\n";
   while ( <PS> ) {
       ...
   }
   

   open() captures the data of a command

   open("command |"))
   

   furthermore you can feed an external command with data generated from your script

   open("| command")
   

   just pipe playin ;)

Answer 2

What do you mean by sourcing an .ini file? An .ini file is a configurations file. You need an ini parser. Here's a SO link to help with that: How can I access INI files from Perl? .

Personally I used Tiny and I found it easy and suitable for my needs.