quoting {print $NF} inside layers of single and double quotes? - perl

Question

Stuck trying to figure out how to single quotes withing single quotes within double quotes. Here's what I'm trying to do....
From perl, I want to run a system command that...
- does an ssh into a remote machine
- executes 'uptime' and then plucks the last field out of that (avg load last 15 min).
\#\!/usr/bin/env perl
my $cmd = "ssh othermachine 'uptime | awk '{print $NF}'' > local_file.dat";
system($cmd);
Of course this won't run ...
% ./try.pl
Missing }.
%
Missing "}" ??? Looks like it's interpreting the $NF} as a var? I tried escaping the {} chars with no luck. I tried escaping the $, no luck. I tried a space before the }, no luck but different msg (Undefined variable).
c-shell BTW and thanks in advance !

Answer 1

You want the following to be ssh's second argument:
uptime | awk '{print $NF}'
To do that, you simply placed single quotes around it. But that doesn't work because it contains single quotes.
You want to build a string that contains $NF, but you did it as follows:
"...$NF..."
That will place the value of (non-existent) Perl variable $NF in the string.
Do it step by step.
Static:
Remote command:
uptime | awk '{print $NF}'
Local command:
ssh othermachine 'uptime | awk '\''{print $NF}'\''' >local_file.dat
String literal:
my $local_cmd = q{ssh othermachine 'uptime | awk '\''{print $NF}'\''' >local_file.dat}
Dynamic:
use String::ShellQuote qw( shell_quote );
my $remote_cmd = q{uptime | awk '{print $NF}'};
my $local_cmd = shell_quote('ssh', 'othermachine', $remote_cmd) . ' >local_file.dat';

Answer 2

Use Net::OpenSSH and let it do the quoting for you:
use Net::OpenSSH;
my $ssh = Net::OpenSSH->new($othermachine,
remote_shell => 'tcsh');
$ssh->system({stdout_file => 'local_file.dat'},
'uptime', \\'|', 'awk', '{print $NF}')
or die "ssh command failed: " . $ssh->error;