[Buffalo-pm] Asterisk Wildcard When Running Command via Exec...

[Kevin Eye]

This is a feature -- when you use more than one arg with system or exec, it
doesn't send the arguments through the shell, so that things like spaces in
filenames and maliciously coded input doing unexpected things. Wildcard
expansion, IO redirection and other nifty things are done by the shell,
though, so you don't get them anymore.

One way to get the behavior you want would be to use one long string
argument to exec like this:
exec("/bin/grep $wordToFind /var/adm/messages*");

That will run it though the shell, expanding the wildcard, but also possibly
doing very bad things if $wordToFind isn't always safely escaped.

A better way is to use the glob function, which expands asterisks on file
names. Try this:
exec ("/bin/grep", "$wordToFind", glob "/var/adm/messages*");

 - Kevin


On 7/6/06 2:34 PM, "DANIEL MAGNUSZEWSKI" <dmagnuszewski at mandtbank.com>
wrote:

> Mongers,
> 
> I am trying to grep from multiple files, named: messages, messages.0,
> messages.1, messages.2, etc. What I'd like to do is grep through all of
> these at once. The command to do this is:
> 
> grep <wordToFind> /var/adm/messages*
> 
> So what I've tried doing is the following:
> 
> my $wordToFind = 'router1';
> open (PROGRAM, "-|")  or exec ("/bin/grep", "$wordToFind",
> "/var/adm/messages*");
> 
> The asterisk seems to break, and I get no information. When I remove
> the asterisk:
> 
> my $wordToFind = 'router1';
> open (PROGRAM, "-|")  or exec ("/bin/grep", "$wordToFind",
> "/var/adm/messages");
> 
> ...then everything works fine, but only greps through that one file.
> How can I declare a wildcard within this code - if at all?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -Dan
> 
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-- 
Kevin Eye
Web Applications Developer
Marketing and Creative Services
University at Buffalo
330 Crofts Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260
eye at buffalo.edu
phone (716) 645-5000 x1435
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