Function calling another function

[Mike Keys]

At the sake of simplifying code, I moved a transaction logging function it's own routine and am calling it through the actual transaction routines. However, the file is being created but nothing is being written. Here is a sample of a transaction function and the logging funciton.


#######################################################################
# Remove a user #
#######################################################################
sub userdel {

my $cmd = sprintf("/usr/sbin/userdel %s",$user);
my $status = system($cmd);
writetrans($cmd);
return ($status);
}

#######################################################################
# Write transactions to file #
#######################################################################
sub writetrans {

my $tmpfile = "/home/ops/passwd.fil";
my $trans = sprintf("%s \n",$cmd);
open (TMPFILE,">>$tmpfile"); # Write transactions to logfile
print TMPFILE "$trans";
close (TMPFILE) || die "\nCould not write to file: $tmpfile:$!";

}


I am passing the $cmd to the transaction logging function (writetrans) and have tried everything I could think of to get this to work. What am I missing?

[David Child_1]

It looks like your setting $cmd in one function and it will be locale to that function only. Two ways around it are;

1) create global $cmd
2) change writetrans to;

sub writetrans {

my $cmd = $_;

my $tmpfile = "/home/ops/passwd.fil";
my $trans = sprintf("%s \n",$cmd);
open (TMPFILE,">>$tmpfile"); # Write transactions to logfile
print TMPFILE "$trans";
close (TMPFILE) || die "\nCould not write to file: $tmpfile:$!";

}

[Gopi Sekar]

Which shell are you trying this, I believe it is not BASH, anyway Let us do a basic check:

move the writetrans function before userdel function and see whether it solves the problem

Regards,
Gopi

[Pat Lieberg]

I had trouble with this before and it had to do with buffers not being flushed, so my log file was empty while the process was running. You can force it to not cache the writes to your logfile by doing:

$| = 1;

That's a pipe symbol by the way.

Hope this helps.

-Pat Lieberg
Unix Systems Admin.
3M IT Operations

[Mike Keys]

Pat,

Where do I insert your piece into the code?

[Mike Keys]

This is being done with Perl.

[Mike Keys]

So far suggestions mentioned do not work.

[Gopi Sekar]

oops i am sorry, i better get some specs :)

ok the problem looks like $cmd variable is local to the function userdel and is not reachable in writetrans function.

modify writetrans function to get $cmd as command line argument.

eg:

sub writetrans {

my ($cmd) = @_;


}

Regards,
Gopi

[Mike Keys]

Hey, now i'm getting zeros written to the file. Hooray!

[Mike Keys]

what appears to be happening is that if I place the commands that are in writetrans(); into each transaction function, i get output just fine. yes, because the variable is local to that function.

However, by placeing the commands within their own function, I am getting 0's written to the file. Could it be that the 'sprint' command is doing something odd when passing the variable by reference?