useradd in perl script

[John Guster]

why the command is broke into second line starting at -s option? here is the script:
#!/usr/bin/perl
open(fh, "foreach $line () {
@line=split(':', $line);
print "$line[0]\n";
print "$line[1]\n";
print "$line[2]\n";
$cmd1="/usr/sbin/useradd -u $line[1] -c $line[2] -s /bin/bash -g users -m $line[0]";
print "$cmd1\n";
if (system($cmd1)) {print "failed\n";}
}
close(fh);

here is the testfile:
#cat testfile
#login-name:uid:comment
testid:12345:test1-account

here is the output after run the script:
# ./test-perl.pl
testid
12345
test1-account

/usr/sbin/useradd -u 12345 -c test1
-s /bin/bash -g users -m nm12345
usage: useradd [-u uid [-o]] [-g group] [-G group,...]
[-d home] [-s shell] [-c comment] [-m [-k template]]
[-f inactive] [-e expire ] [-p passwd] [-M] [-n] [-r] name
useradd -D [-g group] [-b base] [-s shell]
[-f inactive] [-e expire ]
sh: line 2: -s: command not found
failed

Any suggestions? Thank you.

[Doug O'Leary]

Hey;

You need to quote the gecos field in the system call that calls userad.

currently, useradd sees test-account, sees the '-' and assumes another argument.

Additionally, more often than not, gecos fields have spaces in them, so you'll want to quote the entry for that as well:

$cmd1="/usr/sbin/useradd -u $line[1] -c \"$line[2]\" -s /bin/bash -g users -m $line[0]";

HTH;

Doug

[Doug O'Leary · Accepted solution]

ah, there it is.

My first post is wrong... well, it's right in that you want to quote the gecos field, but wrong in the reason for your issue.

The issue is that you're reading the line from your text file, including the new line. So, basically, your testid's gecos field isn't:

test1-account

it is, in fact:

test1-account\n

that's getting added to your system command such that:

$cmd =
useradd -u 12345 -c test1-account\n -s /bin/bash ... [snip]

that's easy to get rid of:

foreach $line () {
chomp $line # removes the newline
@line=split(':', $line);

HTH;

Doug

[John Guster]

thanks. the line should be ended with ":" in the testfile, then the useradd command is one line and runs with no issue.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi John:

> the line should be ended with ":" in the testfile, then the useradd command is one line and runs with no issue.

That's a kludge that causes an additional (albeit empty) field to be created. Doug was correct, you needed to 'chomp' the newline from each input line read. Consider the '/etc/passwd' file --- while colon delimited, there is no trailing delimiter following the login program field.

Regards!

...JRF...