[Israel.pm] Query regarding executing a shell script in perl

[Omer Zak]

On Mon, 2005-02-14 at 12:22 +0200, Vijay Goutham wrote:
> Hi All,
>    I have a perl process.  The perl process need to do the following,
>    
>    a.  Execute a shell script (ksh) which sets some environment variables 
>        (E.g. the shell script contains a set of export statements like,
>           export CLASS=10
>           export ROOM=4
>           etc..
>         )

The shell script is executed in a sub-process (a process of its own).
So none of the changes to the values of the environment variables set in
the script are visible.

>    b.   A set of perl functions which uses these environment variables
> (CLASS, ROOM).
>         (E.g.  print $ENV{'CLASS'}; )
>         
>    Now the problem i face is,
>    
>    I call the shell script (say set_env), using either
>    
>    i)  system("setenv"); (or)
>    ii) `setenv` (using backtick)
>    
>    But the issue is, after executing the system (or `setenv`) the
> environment variables are getting lost.
>    
>    
>    Is there anyway of executing the setenv script and ensure that the
> variables are set in the current shell, so that my perl functions can
> use it?

Possible solutions:

1. Invoke your Perl script from the shell script.  The Perl script will
execute in a sub-process of the shell script and inherit its environment
variable values.

2. Set the environment variables by setting $ENV inside the Perl script.

3. Interpret the shell script inside the Perl script i.e. have the Perl
script read the shell script line by line, find which environment
variable+value it wants to set and set the environment as in (2).

4. Write an easily-parsed file listing the environment variables and
desired values and have the Perl script read and parse it and set the
environment variables as in (3).
                                              --- Omer
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