Question

I’m using ActivePerl 5.12.4 on Windows 7. I have this in my script …

my $cmd = "ant -Dbuildtarget=$env -Dmodule=\"$module\" -Dproject=$project -Dnolabel=true checkout-selenium-tests";
print "cmd: $cmd\n"; 
open(F, $cmd) or die "Failed to execute: $!";
while (<F>) {
    print;
}

Sadly, my script dies at the “open” command with the failure:

Failed to execute: Invalid argument at run_single_folder.pl line 17.

I don’t know what’s wrong. When I print out the command that’s executed, I can execute that command normally in the command window and it runs fine. How can I figure out why executing the command in the Perl script is dying when it is succeeding on the command prompt?

Answer 1

If you want to start a subprocess with a call to open() and capture its output you need to use a | after the command, or perl will think you want to open a file.