phpman > man > Shell(3pm)

Found in /usr/share/perl/5.34/pod/perlfaq8.pod
  How can I call backticks without shell processing?
    This is a bit tricky. You can't simply write the command like this:

        @ok = `grep @opts '$search_string' @filenames`;

    As of Perl 5.8.0, you can use "open()" with multiple arguments. Just
    like the list forms of "system()" and "exec()", no shell escapes happen.

        open( GREP, "-|", 'grep', @opts, $search_string, @filenames );
        chomp(@ok = <GREP>);
        close GREP;

    You can also:

        my @ok = ();
        if (open(GREP, "-|")) {
            while (<GREP>) {
                chomp;
                push(@ok, $_);
            }
            close GREP;
        } else {
            exec 'grep', @opts, $search_string, @filenames;
        }

    Just as with "system()", no shell escapes happen when you "exec()" a
    list. Further examples of this can be found in "Safe Pipe Opens" in
    perlipc.

    Note that if you're using Windows, no solution to this vexing issue is
    even possible. Even though Perl emulates "fork()", you'll still be
    stuck, because Windows does not have an argc/argv-style API.

  How can I convert my shell script to perl?
    Learn Perl and rewrite it. Seriously, there's no simple converter.
    Things that are awkward to do in the shell are easy to do in Perl, and
    this very awkwardness is what would make a shell->perl converter nigh-on
    impossible to write. By rewriting it, you'll think about what you're
    really trying to do, and hopefully will escape the shell's pipeline
    datastream paradigm, which while convenient for some matters, causes
    many inefficiencies.

  How do I tell the difference between errors from the shell and perl?
    (answer contributed by brian d foy)

    When you run a Perl script, something else is running the script for
    you, and that something else may output error messages. The script might
    emit its own warnings and error messages. Most of the time you cannot
    tell who said what.

    You probably cannot fix the thing that runs perl, but you can change how
    perl outputs its warnings by defining a custom warning and die
    functions.

    Consider this script, which has an error you may not notice immediately.

        #!/usr/locl/bin/perl

        print "Hello World\n";

    I get an error when I run this from my shell (which happens to be bash).
    That may look like perl forgot it has a "print()" function, but my
    shebang line is not the path to perl, so the shell runs the script, and
    I get the error.

        $ ./test
        ./test: line 3: print: command not found

    A quick and dirty fix involves a little bit of code, but this may be all
    you need to figure out the problem.

        #!/usr/bin/perl -w

        BEGIN {
            $SIG{__WARN__} = sub{ print STDERR "Perl: ", @_; };
            $SIG{__DIE__}  = sub{ print STDERR "Perl: ", @_; exit 1};
        }

        $a = 1 + undef;
        $x / 0;
        __END__

    The perl message comes out with "Perl" in front. The "BEGIN" block works
    at compile time so all of the compilation errors and warnings get the
    "Perl:" prefix too.

        Perl: Useless use of division (/) in void context at ./test line 9.
        Perl: Name "main::a" used only once: possible typo at ./test line 8.
        Perl: Name "main::x" used only once: possible typo at ./test line 9.
        Perl: Use of uninitialized value in addition (+) at ./test line 8.
        Perl: Use of uninitialized value in division (/) at ./test line 9.
        Perl: Illegal division by zero at ./test line 9.
        Perl: Illegal division by zero at -e line 3.

    If I don't see that "Perl:", it's not from perl.

    You could also just know all the perl errors, and although there are
    some people who may know all of them, you probably don't. However, they
    all should be in the perldiag manpage. If you don't find the error in
    there, it probably isn't a perl error.

    Looking up every message is not the easiest way, so let perl to do it
    for you. Use the diagnostics pragma with turns perl's normal messages
    into longer discussions on the topic.

        use diagnostics;

    If you don't get a paragraph or two of expanded discussion, it might not
    be perl's message.