How to call a script in a subdirectory from Perl using system (Windows)

Question

I have a base directory, call it MAIN and two subfolders, SCRIPTS and WORK. When using the following line of code, the script calls upon the job and runs it, only if job_name is in the MAIN folder, then prints output or error to job_name.out/.err in the WORK folder.

system("$job_name > ./WORK/$job_name.out 2> ./WORK/$job_name.err");

If I move the jobs into SCRIPTS then I cannot seem to find an efficient/simple way to call upon it.. I figured something similar to the following code would work:

system("SCRIPTS/$job_name > ./WORK/$job_name.out 2> ./WORK/$job_name.err");

But I get errors like:

SCRIPTS is not recognized as an internal or external command......
The system cannot find the path specified.

How can I compose this command to get it to work from a subdirectory?

Where do you execute your script from in the second case? Your MAIN folder ? is writting ./SCRIPTS/$job_name changing anything ? — Aserre
– Aserre, Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 14:44
"But I cannot get it to work!" is not an adequate problem description. — ikegami
– ikegami, Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 14:45
Sorry ikegami, the errors I received varied depending on the syntax I was using, I was getting errors from "SCRIPTS is not recognized as an internal or external command......" to "The system cannot find the path specified." I will be sure to be more specific in future questions! — AMcNall
– AMcNall, Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 15:43

Zaid · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-02 14:44:28Z

3

On Windows, filepaths are specified with backslashes (\).

Instead of system("SCRIPTS/$job_name"...), try system("SCRIPTS\\$job_name"...)

answered Jun 2, 2014 at 14:44

Zaid

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4 Comments

Aserre Over a year ago

I thought about that as well, but then how could his 1st example have worked ?

Zaid Over a year ago

@Ploutox : Windows is more picky about the path to the command being run than that of the output redirection. Try it out with C:\> echo "Hi" > ./some_subdir/test.txt

Aserre Over a year ago

Oh ok. I didn't think you could have an hybrid syntax like that. I'm more of a Linux person myself ...

Zaid Over a year ago

@Ploutox : Windows is quite quirky. I think the / came into the picture with Windows NT 4.0 when they implemented/copied a lot of Unix's functionality (pipes, etc.)

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