path: root/pod/perlfaq8.pod

=head1 NAME

perlfaq8 - System Interaction ($Revision: 1.17 $, $Date: 1997/03/25 18:17:12 $)

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This section of the Perl FAQ covers questions involving operating
system interaction.  This involves interprocess communication (IPC),
control over the user-interface (keyboard, screen and pointing
devices), and most anything else not related to data manipulation.

Read the FAQs and documentation specific to the port of perl to your
operating system (eg, L<perlvms>, F<REAMDE.os2>, ...).  These should
contain more detailed information on the vagaries of your perl.

=head2 How do I find out which operating system I'm running under?

The $^O variable ($OSTYPE if you use English) contains the operating
system that your perl binary was built for.

=head2 How come exec() doesn't return?

Because that's what it does: it replaces your currently running
program with a different one.  If you want to keep going (as is
probably the case if you're asking this question) use system()
instead.

=head2 How do I do fancy stuff with the keyboard/screen/mouse?

How you access/control keyboards, screens, and pointing devices
("mice") is system-dependent.  Try the following modules:

=over 4

=item Keyboard

    Term::Cap			Standard perl distribution
    Term::ReadKey		CPAN
    Term::ReadLine::Gnu		CPAN
    Term::ReadLine::Perl	CPAN
    Term::Screen		CPAN

=item Screen

    Term::Cap			Standard perl distribution
    Curses			CPAN
    Term::ANSIColor		CPAN

=item Mouse

    Tk				CPAN

=back

=head2 How do I ask the user for a password?

(This question has nothing to do with the web.  See a different
FAQ for that.)

There's an example of this in L<perlfunc/crypt>).  First, you put
the terminal into "no echo" mode, then just read the password
normally.  You may do this with an old-style ioctl() function, POSIX
terminal control (see L<POSIX>, and Chapter 7 of the Camel), or a call
to the B<stty> program, with varying degrees of portability.

You can also do this for most systems using the Term::ReadKey module
from CPAN, which is easier to use and in theory more portable.

=head2 How do I read and write the serial port?

This depends on which operating system your program is running on.  In
the case of Unix, the serial ports will be accessible through files in
/dev; on other systems, the devices names will doubtless differ.
Several problem areas common to all device interaction are the
following

=over 4

=item lockfiles

Your system may use lockfiles to control multiple access.  Make sure
you follow the correct protocol.  Unpredictable behaviour can result
from multiple processes reading from one device.

=item open mode

If you expect to use both read and write operations on the device,
you'll have to open it for update (see L<perlfunc/"open"> for
details).  You may wish to open it without running the risk of
blocking by using sysopen() and C<O_RDWR|O_NDELAY|O_NOCTTY> from the
Fcntl module (part of the standard perl distribution).  See
L<perlfunc/"sysopen"> for more on this approach.

=item end of line

Some devices will be expecting a "\r" at the end of each line rather
than a "\n".  In some ports of perl, "\r" and "\n" are different from
their usual (Unix) ASCII values of "\012" and "\015".  You may have to
give the numeric values you want directly, using octal ("\015"), hex
("0x0D"), or as a control-character specification ("\cM").

    print DEV "atv1\012";	# wrong, for some devices
    print DEV "atv1\015";	# right, for some devices

Even though with normal text files, a "\n" will do the trick, there is
still no unified scheme for terminating a line that is portable
between Unix, MS-DOS/Windows, and Macintosh, except to terminate I<ALL> line
ends with "\015\012", and strip what you don't need from the output.
This applies especially to socket I/O and autoflushing, discussed
next.

=item flushing output

If you expect characters to get to your device when you print() them,
you'll want to autoflush that filehandle, as in the older

    use FileHandle;
    DEV->autoflush(1);

and the newer

    use IO::Handle;
    DEV->autoflush(1);

You can use select() and the C<$|> variable to control autoflushing
(see L<perlvar/$|> and L<perlfunc/select>):

    $oldh = select(DEV);
    $| = 1;
    select($oldh);

You'll also see code that does this without a temporary variable, as in

    select((select(DEV), $| = 1)[0]);

As mentioned in the previous item, this still doesn't work when using
socket I/O between Unix and Macintosh.  You'll need to hardcode your
line terminators, in that case.

=item non-blocking input

If you are doing a blocking read() or sysread(), you'll have to
arrange for an alarm handler to provide a timeout (see
L<perlfunc/alarm>).  If you have a non-blocking open, you'll likely
have a non-blocking read, which means you may have to use a 4-arg
select() to determine whether I/O is ready on that device (see
L<perlfunc/"select">.

=back

=head2 How do I decode encrypted password files?

You spend lots and lots of money on dedicated hardware, but this is
bound to get you talked about.

Seriously, you can't if they are Unix password files - the Unix
password system employs one-way encryption.  Programs like Crack can
forcibly (and intelligently) try to guess passwords, but don't (can't)
guarantee quick success.

If you're worried about users selecting bad passwords, you should
proactively check when they try to change their password (by modifying
passwd(1), for example).

=head2 How do I start a process in the background?

You could use

    system("cmd &")

or you could use fork as documented in L<perlfunc/"fork">, with
further examples in L<perlipc>.  Some things to be aware of, if you're
on a Unix-like system:

=over 4

=item STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR are shared

Both the main process and the backgrounded one (the "child" process)
share the same STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR filehandles.  If both try to
access them at once, strange things can happen.  You may want to close
or reopen these for the child.  You can get around this with
C<open>ing a pipe (see L<perlfunc/"open">) but on some systems this
means that the child process cannot outlive the parent.

=item Signals

You'll have to catch the SIGCHLD signal, and possibly SIGPIPE too.
SIGCHLD is sent when the backgrounded process finishes.  SIGPIPE is
sent when you write to a filehandle whose child process has closed (an
untrapped SIGPIPE can cause your program to silently die).  This is
not an issue with C<system("cmd&")>.

=item Zombies

You have to be prepared to "reap" the child process when it finishes

    $SIG{CHLD} = sub { wait };

See L<perlipc/"Signals"> for other examples of code to do this.
Zombies are not an issue with C<system("prog &")>.

=back

=head2 How do I trap control characters/signals?

You don't actually "trap" a control character.  Instead, that
character generates a signal, which you then trap.  Signals are
documented in L<perlipc/"Signals"> and chapter 6 of the Camel.

Be warned that very few C libraries are reentrant.  Therefore, if you
attempt to print() in a handler that got invoked during another stdio
operation your internal structures will likely be in an
inconsistent state, and your program will dump core.  You can
sometimes avoid this by using syswrite() instead of print().

Unless you're exceedingly careful, the only safe things to do inside a
signal handler are: set a variable and exit.  And in the first case,
you should only set a variable in such a way that malloc() is not
called (eg, by setting a variable that already has a value).

For example:

    $Interrupted = 0;	# to ensure it has a value
    $SIG{INT} = sub {
        $Interrupted++;
	syswrite(STDERR, "ouch\n", 5);
    }

However, because syscalls restart by default, you'll find that if
you're in a "slow" call, such as E<lt>FHE<gt>, read(), connect(), or
wait(), that the only way to terminate them is by "longjumping" out;
that is, by raising an exception.  See the timeout handler for a
blocking flock() in L<perlipc/"Signals"> or chapter 6 of the Camel.

=head2 How do I modify the shadow password file on a Unix system?

If perl was installed correctly, the getpw*() functions described in
L<perlfunc> provide (read-only) access to the shadow password file.
To change the file, make a new shadow password file (the format varies
from system to system - see L<passwd(5)> for specifics) and use
pwd_mkdb(8) to install it (see L<pwd_mkdb(5)> for more details).

=head2 How do I set the time and date?

Assuming you're running under sufficient permissions, you should be
able to set the system-wide date and time by running the date(1)
program.  (There is no way to set the time and date on a per-process
basis.)  This mechanism will work for Unix, MS-DOS, Windows, and NT;
the VMS equivalent is C<set time>.

However, if all you want to do is change your timezone, you can
probably get away with setting an environment variable:

    $ENV{TZ} = "MST7MDT";		   # unixish
    $ENV{'SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL'}="-5" # vms
    system "trn comp.lang.perl";

=head2 How can I sleep() or alarm() for under a second?

If you want finer granularity than the 1 second that the sleep()
function provides, the easiest way is to use the select() function as
documented in L<perlfunc/"select">.  If your system has itimers and
syscall() support, you can check out the old example in
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/misc/ancient/tutorial/eg/itimers.pl .

=head2 How can I measure time under a second?

In general, you may not be able to.  The Time::HiRes module (available
from CPAN) provides this functionality for some systems.

In general, you may not be able to.  But if you system supports both the
syscall() function in Perl as well as a system call like gettimeofday(2),
then you may be able to do something like this:

    require 'sys/syscall.ph';

    $TIMEVAL_T = "LL";

    $done = $start = pack($TIMEVAL_T, ());

    syscall( &SYS_gettimeofday, $start, 0)) != -1
               or die "gettimeofday: $!";

       ##########################
       # DO YOUR OPERATION HERE #
       ##########################

    syscall( &SYS_gettimeofday, $done, 0) != -1
           or die "gettimeofday: $!";

    @start = unpack($TIMEVAL_T, $start);
    @done  = unpack($TIMEVAL_T, $done);

    # fix microseconds
    for ($done[1], $start[1]) { $_ /= 1_000_000 }

    $delta_time = sprintf "%.4f", ($done[0]  + $done[1]  )
                                            -
                                 ($start[0] + $start[1] );

=head2 How can I do an atexit() or setjmp()/longjmp()? (Exception handling)

Release 5 of Perl added the END block, which can be used to simulate
atexit().  Each package's END block is called when the program or
thread ends (see L<perlmod> manpage for more details).  It isn't
called when untrapped signals kill the program, though, so if you use
END blocks you should also use

	use sigtrap qw(die normal-signals);

Perl's exception-handling mechanism is its eval() operator.  You can
use eval() as setjmp and die() as longjmp.  For details of this, see
the section on signals, especially the timeout handler for a blocking
flock() in L<perlipc/"Signals"> and chapter 6 of the Camel.

If exception handling is all you're interested in, try the
exceptions.pl library (part of the standard perl distribution).

If you want the atexit() syntax (and an rmexit() as well), try the
AtExit module available from CPAN.

=head2 Why doesn't my sockets program work under System V (Solaris)? What does the error message "Protocol not supported" mean?

Some Sys-V based systems, notably Solaris 2.X, redefined some of the
standard socket constants.  Since these were constant across all
architectures, they were often hardwired into perl code.  The proper
way to deal with this is to "use Socket" to get the correct values.

Note that even though SunOS and Solaris are binary compatible, these
values are different.  Go figure.

=head2 How can I call my system's unique C functions from Perl?

In most cases, you write an external module to do it - see the answer
to "Where can I learn about linking C with Perl? [h2xs, xsubpp]".
However, if the function is a system call, and your system supports
syscall(), you can use the syscall function (documented in
L<perlfunc>).

Remember to check the modules that came with your distribution, and
CPAN as well - someone may already have written a module to do it.

=head2 Where do I get the include files to do ioctl() or syscall()?

Historically, these would be generated by the h2ph tool, part of the
standard perl distribution.  This program converts cpp(1) directives
in C header files to files containing subroutine definitions, like
&SYS_getitimer, which you can use as arguments to your functions.
It doesn't work perfectly, but it usually gets most of the job done.
Simple files like F<errno.h>, F<syscall.h>, and F<socket.h> were fine,
but the hard ones like F<ioctl.h> nearly always need to hand-edited.
Here's how to install the *.ph files:

    1.  become superuser
    2.  cd /usr/include
    3.  h2ph *.h */*.h

If your system supports dynamic loading, for reasons of portability and
sanity you probably ought to use h2xs (also part of the standard perl
distribution).  This tool converts C header files to Perl extensions.
See L<perlxstut> for how to get started with h2xs.

If your system doesn't support dynamic loading, you still probably
ought to use h2xs.  See L<perlxstut> and L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> for
more information (in brief, just use B<make perl> instead of a plain
B<make> to rebuild perl with a new static extension).

=head2 Why do setuid perl scripts complain about kernel problems?

Some operating systems have bugs in the kernel that make setuid
scripts inherently insecure.  Perl gives you a number of options
(described in L<perlsec>) to work around such systems.

=head2 How can I open a pipe both to and from a command?

The IPC::Open2 module (part of the standard perl distribution) is an
easy-to-use approach that internally uses pipe(), fork(), and exec()
to do the job.  Make sure you read the deadlock warnings in its
documentation, though (see L<IPC::Open2>).

=head2 Why can't I get the output of a command with system()?

You're confusing the purpose of system() and backticks ('').  system()
runs a command and returns exit status information (as a 16 bit value
-- the low 8 bits are the signal the process died from, if any, and
the high 8 bits are the actual exit value).  Backticks ('') run a
command and return what it sent to STDOUT.

    $status = system("mail-users");
    $output = `ls`;

=head2 How can I capture STDERR from an external command?

There are three basic ways of running external commands:

    system $cmd;		# using system()
    $output = `$cmd`;		# using backticks (``)
    open (PIPE, "cmd |");	# using open()

With system(), both STDOUT and STDERR will go the same place as the
script's versions of these, unless the command redirects them.
Backticks and open() read B<only> the STDOUT of your command.

With any of these, you can change file descriptors before the call:

    open(STDOUT, ">logfile");
    system("ls");

or you can use Bourne shell file-descriptor redirection:

    $output = `$cmd 2>some_file`;
    open (PIPE, "cmd 2>some_file |");

You can also use file-descriptor redirection to make STDERR a
duplicate of STDOUT:

    $output = `$cmd 2>&1`;
    open (PIPE, "cmd 2>&1 |");

Note that you I<cannot> simply open STDERR to be a dup of STDOUT
in your Perl program and avoid calling the shell to do the redirection.
This doesn't work:

    open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT");
    $alloutput = `cmd args`;  # stderr still escapes

This fails because the open() makes STDERR go to where STDOUT was
going at the time of the open().  The backticks then make STDOUT go to
a string, but don't change STDERR (which still goes to the old
STDOUT).

Note that you I<must> use Bourne shell (sh(1)) redirection syntax in
backticks, not csh(1)!  Details on why Perl's system() and backtick
and pipe opens all use the Bourne shell are in
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FMTEYEWTK/versus/csh.whynot .

You may also use the IPC::Open3 module (part of the standard perl
distribution), but be warned that it has a different order of
arguments from IPC::Open2 (see L<IPC::Open3>).

=head2 Why doesn't open() return an error when a pipe open fails?

It does, but probably not how you expect it to.  On systems that
follow the standard fork()/exec() paradigm (eg, Unix), it works like
this: open() causes a fork().  In the parent, open() returns with the
process ID of the child.  The child exec()s the command to be piped
to/from.  The parent can't know whether the exec() was successful or
not - all it can return is whether the fork() succeeded or not.  To
find out if the command succeeded, you have to catch SIGCHLD and
wait() to get the exit status.  You should also catch SIGPIPE if
you're writing to the child -- you may not have found out the exec()
failed by the time you write.  This is documented in L<perlipc>.

On systems that follow the spawn() paradigm, open() I<might> do what
you expect - unless perl uses a shell to start your command. In this
case the fork()/exec() description still applies.

=head2 What's wrong with using backticks in a void context?

Strictly speaking, nothing.  Stylistically speaking, it's not a good
way to write maintainable code because backticks have a (potentially
humungous) return value, and you're ignoring it.  It's may also not be very
efficient, because you have to read in all the lines of output, allocate
memory for them, and then throw it away.  Too often people are lulled
to writing:

    `cp file file.bak`;

And now they think "Hey, I'll just always use backticks to run programs."
Bad idea: backticks are for capturing a program's output; the system()
function is for running programs.

Consider this line:

    `cat /etc/termcap`;

You haven't assigned the output anywhere, so it just wastes memory
(for a little while).  Plus you forgot to check C<$?> to see whether
the program even ran correctly.  Even if you wrote

    print `cat /etc/termcap`;

In most cases, this could and probably should be written as

    system("cat /etc/termcap") == 0
	or die "cat program failed!";

Which will get the output quickly (as its generated, instead of only
at the end ) and also check the return value.

system() also provides direct control over whether shell wildcard
processing may take place, whereas backticks do not.

=head2 How can I call backticks without shell processing?

This is a bit tricky.  Instead of writing

    @ok = `grep @opts '$search_string' @filenames`;

You have to do this:

    my @ok = ();
    if (open(GREP, "-|")) {
        while (<GREP>) {
	    chomp;
            push(@ok, $_);
        }
	close GREP;
    } else {
        exec 'grep', @opts, $search_string, @filenames;
    }

Just as with system(), no shell escapes happen when you exec() a list.

=head2 Why can't my script read from STDIN after I gave it EOF (^D on Unix, ^Z on MS-DOS)?

Because some stdio's set error and eof flags that need clearing.  The
POSIX module defines clearerr() that you can use.  That is the
technically correct way to do it.  Here are some less reliable
workarounds:

=over 4

=item 1

Try keeping around the seekpointer and go there, like this:

    $where = tell(LOG);
    seek(LOG, $where, 0);

=item 2

If that doesn't work, try seeking to a different part of the file and
then back.

=item 3

If that doesn't work, try seeking to a different part of
the file, reading something, and then seeking back.

=item 4

If that doesn't work, give up on your stdio package and use sysread.

=back

=head2 How can I convert my shell script to perl?

Learn Perl and rewrite it.  Seriously, there's no simple converter.
Things that are awkward to do in the shell are easy to do in Perl, and
this very awkwardness is what would make a shell->perl converter
nigh-on impossible to write.  By rewriting it, you'll think about what
you're really trying to do, and hopefully will escape the shell's
pipeline data stream paradigm, which while convenient for some matters,
causes many inefficiencies.

=head2 Can I use perl to run a telnet or ftp session?

Try the Net::FTP and TCP::Client modules (available from CPAN).
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/scripts/netstuff/telnet.emul.shar will also
help for emulating the telnet protocol.

=head2 How can I write expect in Perl?

Once upon a time, there was a library called chat2.pl (part of the
standard perl distribution), which never really got finished.  These
days, your best bet is to look at the Comm.pl library available from
CPAN.

=head2 Is there a way to hide perl's command line from programs such as "ps"?

First of all note that if you're doing this for security reasons (to
avoid people seeing passwords, for example) then you should rewrite
your program so that critical information is never given as an
argument.  Hiding the arguments won't make your program completely
secure.

To actually alter the visible command line, you can assign to the
variable $0 as documented in L<perlvar>.  This won't work on all
operating systems, though.  Daemon programs like sendmail place their
state there, as in:

    $0 = "orcus [accepting connections]";

=head2 I {changed directory, modified my environment} in a perl script.  How come the change disappeared when I exited the script?  How do I get my changes to be visible?

=over 4

=item Unix

In the strictest sense, it can't be done -- the script executes as a
different process from the shell it was started from.  Changes to a
process are not reflected in its parent, only in its own children
created after the change.  There is shell magic that may allow you to
fake it by eval()ing the script's output in your shell; check out the
comp.unix.questions FAQ for details.

=item VMS

Change to %ENV persist after Perl exits, but directory changes do not.

=back

=head2 How do I close a process's filehandle without waiting for it to complete?

Assuming your system supports such things, just send an appropriate signal
to the process (see L<perlfunc/"kill">.  It's common to first send a TERM
signal, wait a little bit, and then send a KILL signal to finish it off.

=head2 How do I fork a daemon process?

If by daemon process you mean one that's detached (disassociated from
its tty), then the following process is reported to work on most
Unixish systems.  Non-Unix users should check their Your_OS::Process
module for other solutions.

=over 4

=item *

Open /dev/tty and use the the TIOCNOTTY ioctl on it.  See L<tty(4)>
for details.

=item *

Change directory to /

=item *

Reopen STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR so they're not connected to the old
tty.

=item *

Background yourself like this:

    fork && exit;

=back

=head2 How do I make my program run with sh and csh?

See the F<eg/nih> script (part of the perl source distribution).

=head2 How do I keep my own module/library directory?

When you build modules, use the PREFIX option when generating
Makefiles:

    perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/u/mydir/perl

then either set the PERL5LIB environment variable before you run
scripts that use the modules/libraries (see L<perlrun>) or say

    use lib '/u/mydir/perl';

See Perl's L<lib> for more information.

=head2 How do I find out if I'm running interactively or not?

Good question.  Sometimes C<-t STDIN> and C<-t STDOUT> can give clues,
sometimes not.

    if (-t STDIN && -t STDOUT) {
	print "Now what? ";
    }

On POSIX systems, you can test whether your own process group matches
the current process group of your controlling terminal as follows:

    use POSIX qw/getpgrp tcgetpgrp/;
    open(TTY, "/dev/tty") or die $!;
    $tpgrp = tcgetpgrp(TTY);
    $pgrp = getpgrp();
    if ($tpgrp == $pgrp) {
        print "foreground\n";
    } else {
        print "background\n";
    }

=head2 How do I timeout a slow event?

Use the alarm() function, probably in conjunction with a signal
handler, as documented L<perlipc/"Signals"> and chapter 6 of the
Camel.  You may instead use the more flexible Sys::AlarmCall module
available from CPAN.

=head2 How do I set CPU limits?

Use the BSD::Resource module from CPAN.

=head2 How do I avoid zombies on a Unix system?

Use the reaper code from L<perlipc/"Signals"> to call wait() when a
SIGCHLD is received, or else use the double-fork technique described
in L<perlfunc/fork>.

=head2 How do I use an SQL database?

There are a number of excellent interfaces to SQL databases.  See the
DBD::* modules available from
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/dbperl/DBD .

=head2 How do I make a system() exit on control-C?

You can't.  You need to imitate the system() call (see L<perlipc> for
sample code) and then have a signal handler for the INT signal that
passes the signal on to the subprocess.

=head2 How do I open a file without blocking?

If you're lucky enough to be using a system that supports
non-blocking reads (most Unixish systems do), you need only to use the
O_NDELAY or O_NONBLOCK flag from the Fcntl module in conjunction with
sysopen():

    use Fcntl;
    sysopen(FH, "/tmp/somefile", O_WRONLY|O_NDELAY|O_CREAT, 0644)
        or die "can't open /tmp/somefile: $!":

=head2 How do I install a CPAN module?

The easiest way is to have the CPAN module do it for you.  This module
comes with perl version 5.004 and later.  To manually install the CPAN
module, or any well-behaved CPAN module for that matter, follow these
steps:

=over 4

=item 1

Unpack the source into a temporary area.

=item 2

    perl Makefile.PL

=item 3

    make

=item 4

    make test

=item 5

    make install

=back

If your version of perl is compiled without dynamic loading, then you
just need to replace step 3 (B<make>) with B<make perl> and you will
get a new F<perl> binary with your extension linked in.

See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> for more details on building extensions.

=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1997 Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington.
All rights reserved.  See L<perlfaq> for distribution information.