perl / embperl -- IPC::Open3

Question

I have a sample program in 2 formats perl & embperl

The perl version works as a CGI but the embperl version does not work.

Any suggestions or pointers to solutions would be appreciated

OS: Linux version 2.6.35.6-48.fc14.i686.PAE (...) (gcc version 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Fri Oct 22 15:27:53 UTC 2010

NOTE: I originally posted this question to perlmonks [x] and the embperl mailing list [x] but didn't get a solution.

perl working script

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use IPC::Open3;

print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";

my $cmd = 'ls';

my $pid = open3(*HIS_IN, *HIS_OUT, *HIS_ERR, $cmd);
close(HIS_IN);  # give end of file to kid, or feed him
my @outlines = <HIS_OUT>;              # read till EOF
my @errlines = <HIS_ERR>;              # XXX: block potential if massive
print "STDOUT: ", @outlines, "\n";
print "STDERR: ", @errlines, "\n";

waitpid( $pid, 0 );
my $child_exit_status = $? >> 8;

print "child_exit_status: $child_exit_status\n";

embperl non-working script

[-
  use warnings;
  use strict;
  use IPC::Open3;

  my $cmd = 'ls';

  my $pid = open3(*HIS_IN, *HIS_OUT, *HIS_ERR, $cmd);

  close(HIS_IN);  # give end of file to kid, or feed him

  my @outlines = <HIS_OUT>;              # read till EOF
  my @errlines = <HIS_ERR>;              # XXX: block potential if massive
  print OUT "STDOUT: ", @outlines, "\n";
  print OUT "STDERR: ", @errlines, "\n";

  waitpid( $pid, 0 );
  my $child_exit_status = $? >> 8;

  print OUT "child_exit_status: $child_exit_status\n";
-]

Here is the output I receive

STDERR: ls: write error: Bad file descriptor

child_exit_status: 2

Answer 1

open3 redirects the file descriptor associated with STDOUT, excepting it to be fd 1 (what the program you exec will consider STDOUT). But it's not 1. It doesn't even have a file descriptor associated with it! I consider this a bug in open3. I think you can work around it as follows:

local *STDOUT;
open(STDOUT, '>&=', 1) or die $!;
...open3...