I have a perl program that executes an external program/command using backticks. my problem is the program/command i execute sometimes issues an interrupt signal, which terminates my perl script. what i want my perl script to do is to be able to catch that signal (or ignore it) and continue on with the perl script.

E.g.

my $output=`<some command>`;
print $output;

*when i execute '<some command>' from the command line i get the error "User defined signal 2".

---
if <some command> sends an interupt signal, the perl script terminates w/out executing the next line. i want to be able to ignore the interrupt signal and proceed to the next line.


any help would be appreciated. thanks!

If you don't need the output except to have it printed, then you can just use system("<some command>")

i actually need the output from the print command. depending on the state of the machine or the arguements i feed the command, it produces the 'User defined signal 2" conditionally.

i tried adding

$SIG{USR2} = 'INORE';

at the top of the script which it does execute the print command, but i get the error...

-----
rcvMsg1: Connection reset by peer
ms_init failed
-----

any insight?

You can use the open function with the "-|" argument to read the output of a child process, see here. The standard modules IPC::Open2 or IPC::Open3 also allow lower level control to both the input and output of child processes.

Can you precise the program that terminates your script ?
I think that when your script calls a command, it passes the control to and run in the background. When the command terminates, it do not bring the script on. So you need to make your script able to control the behaviour of the command by making it to an environment like the terminal in which you run your script. Never let the command interact directly with the shell.

Hmm...yeah this stuff looks interesting. i would have to read this a couple times but i think this migh tsolve my problem.

Thanks! i'll post if i run into any snags