Get hostname and use within system command

[TSch]

Hi folks,

somehow it seems I'm too stupid for this task that however should be quite easy.

What I'm trying to do is define a variable containing the hostname of the current machine (I'm using Linux). Then I'd like to call a system command containing this variable.

Here's an example ...
(Note: This is NOT the whole script ...)

If I try the following, everything is fine:

use strict;
my $hn = system("hostname");
print $hn;

However, if I change it like this:

... Generating some output ...
use strict;
my $hn = system("hostname");
system ("echo \"$_\" | mail -s \"$hn is reporting an Error.\" recipient");

The mail I receive's got the following header:

0 is reporting an Error.

Instead of containing the hostname as it should.

So I tried the following approach:

use strict;
my @hn = system("hostname");
print @hn;

The Output was quite confusing as it seems that the hostname command returns 2 values:

serverA
0

"So what" I thought and assuming there are 2 values being returned by the hostname command I simply used an array and tried to force him to return only the first value ... Like this:

... Generating some output ...
use strict;
my @hn = system("hostname"];
system ("echo \"$_\" | mail -s \"$hn[0] is reporting an Error.\" recipient");

But still I keep getting this stupid 0 returned ...

Where's the mistake here ?

Regards
Thomas

 

[feherke]

Hi

Where's the mistake here ?

[ol]
[li]Not reading the [tt]system()[/tt] function's documentation. It returns the exit code of the executed command. Its documentation also mentions the alternatives to capture the executed command's output.[/li]
[li]Not using the dedicated Sys::Hostname core module.[/li]
[/ol]


Feherke.

http://free.rootshell.be/~feherke/