Waitfor doesn't recognize the expression in Perl - perl

I've a waitfor command, but its not recognizing the pattern. What may be wrong?
while(#wait = $t->waitfor('/bash-3.2\$ $/i'))
Thanks,
Sharath

You need to set the waitfor to match your PS1 prompt.
On my machine if I:
export PS1=export PS1="\s-\v\$"
my prompt becomes:
bash-3.2$
So I think your code should be looking for
while(#wait = $t->waitfor('/bash\-3\.2\$/i'))
Which hopefully matches
I have to wonder though if your regex is the problem.
If you run an interactive command such as bash it will never return control to the program as it has no user input. Also, the while loop scares me a bit. I'm not sure why you need that.
If you really need bash try running your commands with bash -c <some command>
That way bash will run your single command and return the result.

Related

How to ssh as different user, change group, and run a script within Perl

I need to be able to run a script from within a script but first I need to ssh as a different user and then change my group.
I am currently doing the following inside my perl script:
`ssh <user>#<host> ; newgrp <group> ; /script/to/run.pl`
When running this command form the command line it doesn't seam to switch groups. I assume this is because it's changing to a new shell.
How do I get around this and get it to work?
Also, please note, I do not have sudo/root privelages.
The first semicolon is interpreted by the local shell. So the three commands are run on the same host. I think you want this
ssh <user>\#<host> "newgrp <grp>; /bin/run.pl"
salva, in his reply, answered my question:
sg $group -c '$cmd'
The reason the following command:
newgrp <int>
doesn't work is because it creates a new shell. At least that is my best guess. the "sg" command gets around this.
I have found the following to work (with ksh on hpux) :
ssh user#host "echo 'date;pwd;echo bozo;id' | newgrp nerds;"
which basically executes the commands as user:nerds :
I think OP wants to construct a string to execute from Perl, notice the backticks. Not sure but OP might have to use:
$s='ssh <user>#<host> ; newgrp <group> ; /script/to/run.pl'; # Normal single quotes not backticks
exec($s);
OP, there are different ways to execute shell functions from a Perl script. You used backticks. There is also exec($s) and system($s).

How do I get Perl to run an alias I've defined in BASH?

I have a script that opens up different files at the same time.
My problem here is that when I run system() on the alias I've defined in bash which points to /home/user1/Software/nc, perl tells me that it can't execute the alias because there is no file/directory at the current location.
I know that the alias works because when I invoke it directly in a shell, it opens fine.
Funny enough, I can do system("firefox") within my script fine, but not the alias. How do I use this alias in this script without it breaking?
Perl won't run bash, it will execute the command directly. You can call
bash -c your_command
instead of calling the command itself in Perl.
As it is, this doesn't load your aliases. You need to open an interactive shell, as in #MortezaLSC's answer. There supposedly is a way of loading aliases correctly in a non-interactive shell, but I can't figure it out.
But why don't you just use the command you have aliased to directly in perl? The only reason I could see not to do this, is if your alias is going to change in the future, but you will still want to run whatever command it points to. This seems weird and dangerous to say the least.
Aliases are designed to reduce the typing you do if you invoke commands with the same options etc all the time. They're not all-purpose macros for bash. Bash has functions for doing more complicated stuff, but why would you want to call non-trivial bash code from a perl script? It doesn't seem like you really need this here. Keep the complexity, and the potential for modification and failure, in one place (the perl script).
See a couple of answers to similar questions:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/1499/41977
https://superuser.com/a/183980/187150
If you're smart, you made it so your alias is only defined for interactive shells, so you'll have to launch bash and specify that you want an interactive shell using -i.
system('bash', '-i', '-c', 'shell command');
Is it working?
system 'bash -i -c "your alias parameter"';

How to run a applescript to enter a terminal command

I have been messing around with voice commands, but ran into a snag. I am trying to get a terminal command to run but it is not working. The command makes asterisks "snow" fall.
This is what I have so far.
tell application "Terminal"
activate
run script "ruby -e 'C=`stty size`.scan(/\d+/)[1].to_i;S=["2743".to_i(16)].pack("U*");a={};puts "\033[2J";loop{a[rand(C)]=0;a.each{|x,o|;a[x]+=1;print "\033[#{o};#{x}H \033[#{a[x]};#{x}H#{S} \033[0;0H"};$stdout.flush;sleep 0.1}'"
end tell
All I get are errors
Command line scripts executed with the do shell script command. The string escaping can get a bit gnarly, so be careful with that too. Here's a simple example:
do shell script "say \"Today is `php -r \"echo date('l');\"`\""
EDIT:
OK, I just realised your script actually depends on having a Terminal window to run in, so the usual approach of do shell script won't work here.
There are still a lot of unescaped quotation marks in your Applescript, but rather than fixing those, I think it would be easier to put the whole ruby script into a stand-alone file and pass that to Terminal instead.
stars.rb
#!/usr/bin/ruby
C=`stty size`.scan(/\d+/)[1].to_i;
S=["2743".to_i(16)].pack("U*");
a={};
puts "\033[2J";
loop {
a[rand(C)]=0;
a.each {
|x,o|;
a[x]+=1;
print "\033[#{o};#{x}H \033[#{a[x]};#{x}H#{S} \033[0;0H"
};
$stdout.flush;
sleep 0.1
}
AppleScript
tell application "Terminal"
activate
do script "~/stars.rb"
end tell
An easy way to escape a shell command for AppleScript is to save the command in a text file. Run the script below and copy the Result.
set myText to read (choose file) as «class utf8»

Change shell within Perl script

I am looking for a nice way to get the following done:
So I have a script that I need to run in Python in Unix by calling from a Perl script that was, in turn, called from my Excel VBA macro in Windows using Plink. The Python script, due to dependency issues, has to run in either csh or bash, and I will need to use export/setenv to add a few libraries before running the script. However by default, perl runs in sh shell and as such, there is no way I can add in all the dependencies and have the Python script to run.
So, I am just wondering if there is EITHER: 1. a way for me to add dependencies to sh shell in the perl script, OR 2. force my perl script to run in csh (preferred, since for some reason .bashrc for the account runs into permission issues).
Thanks a lot!
How about "3. Set the appropriate environment variable in the Perl or Python scripts"?
$ENV{'PATH'} = ...
...
os.environ['PATH'] = os.pathsep.join(newpaths + os.environ['PATH'].split(os.pathsep))
(dunno how to get the path separator in Perl, sorz)
To force the shell to csh, try the following in Perl :
`/bin/csh -c "command_name"`;
Edit:
You can use ENV variable, like this. Try that :
$s = `/bin/bash -c 'VAR_FOO=753; echo \$VAR_FOO'`;
print $s;
I ended up just change the .cshrc script, apparently the addition to PATH, for some reason, did not work for me. After that, everything runs smoothly by putting all into one line
so basically it looks something like this
/path/to/.cshrc && /python/path/to/python
Hope that helps!

Can I execute a multiline command in Perl's backticks?

In Unix, I have a process that I want to run using nohup. However this process will at some point wait at a prompt where I have to enter yes or no for it to continue. So far, in Unix I have been doing the following
nohup myprocess <<EOF
y
EOF
So I start the process 'myprocess' using nohup and pipe in a file with 'y' then close the file. The lines above are effectively three seperate commands - i.e. I hit enter on the first line in UNIX, then I get a prompt where I enter 'y' and then press enter to then finally type 'EOF' and hit return again.
I want to know execute this in Perl but I am not sure how I can execute this command as it is over three lines. I don't know if the following will work....
my $startprocess = `nohup myprocess <<EOF &
y
EOF
`
Please help - thank you!
I think your proposal will work as is. If not, try replacing the redirect with a pipe:
my $startprocess = `(echo "y" | nohup myprocess) &`;
Also, depending on WHY you are doing a nohup, please look at the following pure Perl daemonizing approach using Proc::Daemon : How can I run a Perl script as a system daemon in linux?
Expect for interactive programs can be used as well.