[Chicago-talk] Bareword found where operator expected

[Richard Reina]

Alexander,

Thank you very much for your reply. Your explanation was helpful and necessary as I have a lot to learn as a perl programmer.

Thanks again.

---- Chicago.pm chatter <chicago-talk at pm.org> wrote:
>
> Your quoting is not working as you expect.  Don't feel bad -- everybody goes
> through this at some point.  You are going through several levels of
> interpretation.  At the first level, the single quotes are within double
> quotes, and therefore the single quotes have no special meaning.  Since the
> single quotes are not giving you any protection, the next double quote DOES
> have special meaning -- it is the end of the quoted string.  Therefore, the
> word "Hello" is not within a quoted string; so the compiler is trying to
> interpret it as something that could possibly stand alone, i.e. a
> "bareword".  
> 
> Shield the internal quotation marks with backslashes.  Furthermore, although
> "\n" will work as it stands, it does so for the wrong reason; I recommend
> you escape the backslash by using double backslash, like this: "\\n".
> 
> Alexander Danel
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: chicago-talk-bounces+danel=speakeasy.net at pm.org
> [mailto:chicago-talk-bounces+danel=speakeasy.net at pm.org] On Behalf Of
> Richard Reina
> Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 7:28 AM
> To: chicago-talk at pm.org
> Subject: [Chicago-talk] Bareword found where operator expected
> 
> I was hoping someone might help me figure out why this simple three line
> program won't work.
> 
> If I do:
> 
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> 
> use strict;
> system("gnome-terminal -x perl -e 'print "Hello World\n"; sleep 4;'");
> 
> I get:
> 
> Bareword found where operator expected at test.pl line 5, near
> ""gnome-terminal -x perl -e 'print "Hello"
> 	(Missing operator before Hello?)
> String found where operator expected at test.pl line 5, near "n"; sleep
> 4;'""
> syntax error at test.pl line 5, near ""gnome-terminal -x perl -e 'print
> "Hello World"
> Execution of test.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
> 
> 
> What is especially confusing to me is that if I type in:
> 
> gnome-terminal -x perl -e 'print "Hello World\n"; sleep 4;
> 
> at the command line, it works.  I am running linux.
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Richard
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