SPUG: exec question

[Tim Maher]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 10:10:15AM -0800, Ben Reser wrote:

> Ugh that's just ugly.  And runs a shell in the process.  Surely that's
> not what he really wants.  From what it sounds like exec is what he
> wants, I'm not sure why it's not working right.  Perhaps he's
> misunderstanding what it does.  But someone else in the thread already
> mentioned it.
> Ben Reser <ben at reser.org>
> http://ben.reser.org

Exec is working properly, but it seems most of the posters in this
thread are expecting it to provide different services than it really
does:

$ perldoc -tf exec

exec LIST
exec PROGRAM LIST
        The "exec" function executes a system command *and never
        returns*-- use "system" instead of "exec" if you want it to
        return. It fails and returns false only if the command does not
        exist *and* it is executed directly instead of via your system's
        command shell (see below).

        Since it's a common mistake to use "exec" instead of "system",
        Perl warns you if there is a following statement which isn't
        "die", "warn", or "exit" (if "-w" is set - but you always do
        that). If you *really* want to follow an "exec" with some other
        statement, you can use one of these styles to avoid the warning:
...

-Tim
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