=head1 NAME
-perlfaq8 - System Interaction ($Revision: 1.15 $)
+perlfaq8 - System Interaction ($Revision: 1.21 $, $Date: 1997/04/24 22:44:19 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
=head2 How can I measure time under a second?
In general, you may not be able to. The Time::HiRes module (available
-from CPAN) provides this functionality for some systems.
+from CPAN) provides this functionality for some systems.
-In general, you may not be able to. But if you system supports both the
+In general, you may not be able to. But if your system supports both the
syscall() function in Perl as well as a system call like gettimeofday(2),
then you may be able to do something like this:
to do the job. Make sure you read the deadlock warnings in its
documentation, though (see L<IPC::Open2>).
+=head2 Why can't I get the output of a command with system()?
+
+You're confusing the purpose of system() and backticks (``). system()
+runs a command and returns exit status information (as a 16 bit value:
+the low 8 bits are the signal the process died from, if any, and
+the high 8 bits are the actual exit value). Backticks (``) run a
+command and return what it sent to STDOUT.
+
+ $exit_status = system("mail-users");
+ $output_string = `ls`;
+
=head2 How can I capture STDERR from an external command?
There are three basic ways of running external commands:
to/from. The parent can't know whether the exec() was successful or
not - all it can return is whether the fork() succeeded or not. To
find out if the command succeeded, you have to catch SIGCHLD and
-wait() to get the exit status.
+wait() to get the exit status. You should also catch SIGPIPE if
+you're writing to the child -- you may not have found out the exec()
+failed by the time you write. This is documented in L<perlipc>.
On systems that follow the spawn() paradigm, open() I<might> do what
you expect - unless perl uses a shell to start your command. In this
Just as with system(), no shell escapes happen when you exec() a list.
-=head2 Why can't my script read from STDIN after I gave it EOF (^D on Unix, ^Z on MSDOS)?
+=head2 Why can't my script read from STDIN after I gave it EOF (^D on Unix, ^Z on MS-DOS)?
Because some stdio's set error and eof flags that need clearing. The
POSIX module defines clearerr() that you can use. That is the
=head2 Can I use perl to run a telnet or ftp session?
-Try the Net::FTP and TCP::Client modules (available from CPAN).
-http://www.perl.com/CPAN/scripts/netstuff/telnet.emul.shar will also
-help for emulating the telnet protocol.
+Try the Net::FTP, TCP::Client, and Net::Telnet modules (available from
+CPAN). http://www.perl.com/CPAN/scripts/netstuff/telnet.emul.shar
+will also help for emulating the telnet protocol, but Net::Telnet is
+quite probably easier to use..
+
+If all you want to do is pretend to be telnet but don't need
+the initial telnet handshaking, then the standard dual-process
+approach will suffice:
+
+ use IO::Socket; # new in 5.004
+ $handle = IO::Socket::INET->new('www.perl.com:80')
+ || die "can't connect to port 80 on www.perl.com: $!";
+ $handle->autoflush(1);
+ if (fork()) { # XXX: undef means failure
+ select($handle);
+ print while <STDIN>; # everything from stdin to socket
+ } else {
+ print while <$handle>; # everything from socket to stdout
+ }
+ close $handle;
+ exit;
=head2 How can I write expect in Perl?
See the F<eg/nih> script (part of the perl source distribution).
-=head2 How do I keep my own module/library directory?
-
-When you build modules, use the PREFIX option when generating
-Makefiles:
-
- perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/u/mydir/perl
-
-then either set the PERL5LIB environment variable before you run
-scripts that use the modules/libraries (see L<perlrun>) or say
-
- use lib '/u/mydir/perl';
-
-See Perl's L<lib> for more information.
-
=head2 How do I find out if I'm running interactively or not?
Good question. Sometimes C<-t STDIN> and C<-t STDOUT> can give clues,
just need to replace step 3 (B<make>) with B<make perl> and you will
get a new F<perl> binary with your extension linked in.
-See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> for more details on building extensions.
+See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> for more details on building extensions
+and an answer to the question "How do I keep my own module/library
+directory?"
+
+=head2 How do I keep my own module/library directory?
+
+When you build modules, use the PREFIX option when generating
+Makefiles:
+
+ perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/u/mydir/perl
+
+then either set the PERL5LIB environment variable before you run
+scripts that use the modules/libraries (see L<perlrun>) or say
+
+ use lib '/u/mydir/perl';
+
+See Perl's L<lib> for more information.
+
+=head2 How do I add the directory my program lives in to the module/library search path?
+
+ use FindBin;
+ use lib "$FindBin::Bin";
+ use your_own_modules;
+
+=head2 How do I add a directory to my include path at runtime?
+
+Here are the suggested ways of modifying your include path:
+
+ the PERLLIB environment variable
+ the PERL5LIB environment variable
+ the perl -Idir commpand line flag
+ the use lib pragma, as in
+ use lib "$ENV{HOME}/myown_perllib";
+
+The latter is particularly useful because it knows about machine
+dependent architectures. The lib.pm pragmatic module was first
+included with the 5.002 release of Perl.
+
+=head1 How do I get one key from the terminal at a time, under POSIX?
+
+ #!/usr/bin/perl -w
+ use strict;
+ $| = 1;
+ for (1..4) {
+ my $got;
+ print "gimme: ";
+ $got = getone();
+ print "--> $got\n";
+ }
+ exit;
+
+ BEGIN {
+ use POSIX qw(:termios_h);
+
+ my ($term, $oterm, $echo, $noecho, $fd_stdin);
+
+ $fd_stdin = fileno(STDIN);
+
+ $term = POSIX::Termios->new();
+ $term->getattr($fd_stdin);
+ $oterm = $term->getlflag();
+
+ $echo = ECHO | ECHOK | ICANON;
+ $noecho = $oterm & ~$echo;
+
+ sub cbreak {
+ $term->setlflag($noecho);
+ $term->setcc(VTIME, 1);
+ $term->setattr($fd_stdin, TCSANOW);
+ }
+
+ sub cooked {
+ $term->setlflag($oterm);
+ $term->setcc(VTIME, 0);
+ $term->setattr($fd_stdin, TCSANOW);
+ }
+
+ sub getone {
+ my $key = '';
+ cbreak();
+ sysread(STDIN, $key, 1);
+ cooked();
+ return $key;
+ }
+
+ }
+ END { cooked() }
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (c) 1997 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
-All rights reserved. See L<perlfaq> for distribution information.
+Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
+All rights reserved.
+
+When included as part of the Standard Version of Perl, or as part of
+its complete documentation whether printed or otherwise, this work
+may be distributed only under the terms of Perl's Artistic License.
+Any distribution of this file or derivatives thereof I<outside>
+of that package require that special arrangements be made with
+copyright holder.
+
+Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file
+are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and
+encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun
+or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving
+credit would be courteous but is not required.
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