Dealing with Interactive Unix Scripts.

[awolff01]

Hello,

I need to web enable some unix scripts so our users can run them via a web page.

All the scripts are written in ksh or sh and may invoke other unix scripts. (I do not want to rewrite all these scripts). What I am thinking of doing is writing a perl script (using CGI.pm) which will act as the middle man between the web and the unix scripts and allows me to display the prompts of the unix script through a web-browser..and providing a little text box for the user to enter commands.


Whats the most efficient way of calling unix script from within a perl program? Anybody know of any perl modules that might be helpful besides CGI.pm?


Thanks.

 

[ishnid]

Given that HTTP is a stateless protocol, it would be exceedingly difficult to prompt a user via the web each time the unix script demands a further piece of information. If possible, I would suggest prompting for all the information that will be needed the first time around, for example if you were writing a web interface for passwd, you'd have 3 fields on the web page (old password, new password, retype new password), rather than trying to demand them one at a time.

FYI - to execute a command and store its output in a variable, the following two lines are equivalent:

my $output = `command`;
my $output = qx/command/;