Hi all,
I've written a PERL program that runs other PERL programs (through
'require' statements and what not). It worked fine for a couple tasks I had in
mind, but there's an obstacle ahead in the next thing I want to use it for.
The programs it will execute may (or may not) have syntax errors. Asking it
to 'require' a program with a syntax error will cause the main program to quit
and print out the appropriate error message for that. I don't want that. I
want it to keep going.
Recently I've posted questions here about compiling. My thinking was
that if my main program were running machine language programs instead, I
wouldn't get those syntax errors. (The programs might still be junk, and
might give peculiar results, but that's ok.) I haven't figured that out yet,
but I havent given up on it either.
However my uncle suggested another possibility, avoiding any need to
compile; that I check for syntax errors first - in which case I can simply go
on to the next program, thereby avoiding a shutdown of the main program.
This sounded nice but seemed hopeless in practicality (there are so many
possible syntax errors). But then it occurred to me that PERL already checks
for syntax errors. It recognizes them of course, but there's also the -c
option. I thought I could put a line in the main program like
system('perl -c nextprogramtoexecute.pl');
and check to see if that gives me a syntax OK message or not. But I
can't figure out how to get a hold of the message. I figured it would be in
STDOUT, but I can't figure out how to make use of that. I have a PERL
textbook in front of me, but it says precious little about STDOUT. I've
tried capturing this in a variable with backticks, qx//, and the open function
with a vertical bar. All of those shut down my computer, saying I performed
an illegal operation. (Which in itself is another problem. I mean it's one
thing to just not work...)
So, many thanks in advance to anyone who can tell me how to use STDOUT
for this. Or if you have another way to read that message before the program
quits, or another way to test for syntax errors... that's cool too. But I
suspect STDOUT is going to be the best thing.
Fred Kittelmann
P.S. I'm not using UNIX, if that matters.
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