Question

I want to do this in a shell script:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

PERL_PATH=/usr/local/bin/perl

RET1=$(${PERL_PATH} missing_months_wrap.pl)

echo $RET1

How do i do it?

calling the perl script as above is giving me an error:

> shell.sh
Can't return outside a subroutine at missing_months_wrap.pl line 269.

EDIT: inside the perl script the statements are :

unless (@pm1_CS_missing_months)
{
$SETFLAG=1;
}

my @tmp_field_validation = `sqlplus -s $connstr \@DLfields_validation.sql`;

unless (@tmp_field_validation)
{
$SETFLAG=1;
}

if ($SETFLAG==1)
{
return $SETFLAG;
}

Answer 1

The assignment to RET1 in your shell script runs the Perl command and captures its standard output. To make your Perl program go along, change the conditional at the end to

if ($SETFLAG==1)
{
  print $SETFLAG;
}

Running it produces

1

Another way is to use the exit status of the Perl program. With shell.sh containing

#! /usr/bin/ksh
RET1=$(${PERL_PATH} missing_months_wrap.pl)
echo $?

and changing the last conditional in missing_months_wrap.pl to

if ($SETFLAG==1)
{
  exit $SETFLAG;
}

you get the same output:

$ PERL_PATH=/usr/bin/perl ./shell.sh 
1