system(); bug under WinNT for both CPAN and ActivePerl distributions

[p5pRT]

Migrated from rt.perl.org#947 (status was 'resolved')

Searchable as RT947$

[p5pRT]

From [email protected]

I am executing a Perl program under the CPAN distribution for Win95, release 5.00502. The program executes well, calling certain external services that I need including a Win32 version of RCP and RSH, as well as a command line call to a CAD file converter. All is functional and works appropriately.

I downloaded ActivePerl on a WinNT box, configured it, and run the program. Again, it executes without error, however it seems to blow past the system(); function without execution. I created a small test program that simply does​:

  $cmd=sprintf("dir > test.txt");
  system($cmd);

It is apparent that the system() command is not functioning at all. Since I have some code that read from redirection of command output from a Unix server that I am RSHing to, obviously the files are not created on the WinNT machine, and the program die()s on the attempted open() to the file.

Further, to hedge against an ActivePerl issue, I downloaded DOSPERL from CPAN and configured it on the same NT box. It does the same thing. System() does not function.

The only discernable difference that I can think of is that I configure dcom95.exe on the Win95 box. But to my understanding that is not needed on WinNT 4.0 or >, and from the associated documentation I understood that it should not be implemented on the above, only for Win95. Aside from this, to my knowledge, the Perl environments are the same.

I understand that you surely are inundated with mail from around the world, but please consider this email. I have a mission critical application that must be deployed soon on the WinNT configuration to execute both interactively with the character based interface that I have provided for this beta run, and in CGI mode for later implementations.

You assistance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Best Regards,

John Lopez
contract programmer
Van Dorn Demag Corporation

[p5pRT]

From [Unknown Contact. See original ticket]

'dir' is not an executable -- so you can't execute it with system