I am trying to create something in Perl that is basically like the Unix tee
command. I'm trying to read each line of STDIN
, run a substitution on it, and print it. (And eventually, also print it to a file.) This works if I'm using console input, but if I try to pipe input to the command it doesn't do anything. Here's a simple example:
print "about to loop\n";
while(<STDIN>)
{
s/2010/2009/;
print;
}
print "done!\n";
I try to pipe the dir command to it like this:
C:\perltest>dir | mytee.pl
about to loop
done!
Why is it not seeing the piped input? (I'm using Perl 5.10.0 on WinXP, if that is relevant.)
This is actually a bug in how Windows handles IO redirection. I am looking for the reference right now, but it is that bug that requires you to specify
dir | perl filter.pl
rather than being able to use
dir | filter
See Microsoft KB article STDIN/STDOUT Redirection May Not Work If Started from a File Association:
- Start Registry Editor.
- Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
- On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
- Value name:
InheritConsoleHandles
- Data type:
REG_DWORD
- Radix:
Decimal
- Value data:
1
- Quit Registry Editor.
C:\Temp> cat filter.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
while ( <> ) {
print "piped: $_";
}
C:\Temp> dir | filter
piped: Volume in drive C is MAIN
piped: Volume Serial Number is XXXX-XXXX
piped:
piped: Directory of C:\Temp>
piped:
piped: 2010/03/19 03:48 PM .
piped: 2010/03/19 03:48 PM ..
piped: 2010/03/19 03:33 PM 32 m.pm
piped: 2010/03/19 03:48 PM 62 filter.pl
Try:
C:\perltest>dir | perl mytee.pl
Could it be Microsoft KB #321788?
Scripts that contain standard input
(STDIN) and standard output (STDOUT)
may not work correctly if you start
the program from a command prompt and
you use a file association to start
the script.
There's nothing wrong with trying to learn by doing, but a quick search of CPAN shows a number of possible solutions for the tee
in Perl problem.
For example: PerlIO::Tee.
Well IMHO, perl is poor substitute for sed ;)
dir | sed s/2009/2010/