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TeeJay (2309)

TeeJay
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http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk/
Working in Truro
Graduate with BSc (Hons) in Computer Systems and Networks
pm : london.pm, bath.pm, devoncornwall.pm
lug : Devon & Cornwall LUG
CPAN : TEEJAY [cpan.org]
irc : TeeJay
skype : hashbangperl
livejournal : hashbangperl [livejournal.com]
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Journal of TeeJay (2309)

Wednesday March 15, 2006
01:18 PM

Funky perl in my scheduler

[ #29001 ]
I've pretty much completed the scheduler I have been developing - I just need to polish the web gui and integrate log4perl properly.

Anyway - one of the things it does is run commands either as perl via do() or via system().

It captures stderr/stdout through copying the current filehandles for each, and reopening them to files, reopening the copied filehandles again after running a command. That bit is fairly simple, but allows me to slurp in the stderr output after running the command or if the whole process running the command dies unexpectedly. In a scheduler with dozens of jobs to run, many of them in development this is incredibly useful:

###

    open(OLD_STDERR,">&STDERR") or warn "Failed to save STDERR";
    open(STDERR,">$stderr_filename") or warn "Failed to redirect STDERR";
    open(OLD_STDOUT,">&STDOUT") or warn "Failed to save STDOUT";
    open(STDOUT,">$stdout_filename") or warn "Failed to redirect STDOUT";

    print "$$\n"; # don't want an empty file
    warn "$$\n"; # don't want an empty file

   # do stuff ...

    open(STDOUT,">&OLD_STDOUT") or warn "Failed to restore STDOUT";
    open(STDERR,">&OLD_STDERR") or warn "Failed to restore STDERR";

###

The tricky bit this morning was handling scripts that 'exit' when executed within do. I want to capture that exit and continue, but any other exits should happen normally.

The only solution that actually worked was to copy  a glob of CORE::GLOBAL::exit to somewhere, set the glob to sub that warns/logs the exit, with time and pid, before continuing, and then copy the original exit glob back :

###
    eval {
    *real_exit = *CORE::GLOBAL::exit;
    *CORE::GLOBAL::exit = sub { warn localtime() ." pid : $$ attempted to exit! caller : ", join(', ',caller()),"\n"; };
    $ok = do "$filename";
    $error = "couldn't parse $filename: $@" if $@;
    $error = "couldn't do $filename: $!"    unless defined $ok;
    $error = "couldn't run $filename"       unless $ok;
    *CORE::GLOBAL::exit = *real_exit;
    };
###

Getting it working was helped immensely by Nik and Davorg on #london.pm following Nik's talk at the last tech meet where he demonstrated how to over-ride stuff in a script that is being run.

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  • First of all, thanks for sharing -- that's useful stuff. But have you considered local() instead of copying something and then copying it back at the end?

    eval {
        local *CORE::GLOBAL::exit = sub {
            warn localtime() ." pid : $$ attempted to exit! caller : ", join(', ',caller()),"\n";
        };
        $ok = do "$filename";
        $error = "couldn't parse $filename: $@" if $@;
        $error = "couldn't do $filename: $!"    unless defined

    • yes I tried it - despite having being in an anon block inside an eval it didn't descope for some reason - possibly I fluffed it, but exits ended up getting caught in unexpected places elsewhere in the program.
      --

      @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
      print reverse @JAPH;
      • Dom's code won't work because core subroutines can only be overridden at compile-time. Also you don't need to store a copy of *CORE::GLOBAL::exit as it can always be found in CORE::exit (although you can't take a reference to it so just use a wee closure e.g *CORE::GLOBAL::exit = sub { CORE::exit $_[0] };).
        --

        broquaint out

  • What you are doing sounds quite a bit like what IPC::Run3 does.

    Is it missing something, or does it do something in a way that doesn't work for you? Have you heard of it?
    • It kind of evolved, I'd be tempted to replace it with IPC::Run but only if it others exactly the same stuff without adding complexity.

      Although, to be honest - it's working very nicely now
      --

      @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
      print reverse @JAPH;
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