Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi All,
I got a strange problem here. I have a perl script which is fetching data from a database table and writing a file with that data.

If i run that script from linux command line, the file it creates is a normal ascii text file without any binary character in it.But if i run it the same script through crontab, it is creating a data file with some binary characters appended in the data.

Did anybody faced this kind of situation before? Please help me if so?
Thanks in Advance!

Version Information:

Code:

Linux: Debian Kernel 2.6.26-1-amd64
Perl v5.10.0

Regards
Dileep

Are you using the same shell while running the script? Please check that and see


cheers,
Devaraj Takhellambam

Thanks for your response devtakh.

I checked the SHELL env variable and it says /bin/bash.
So it will be used while executing the script from command line and from cron, right?

Regards
Dileep

I'd check environmental variables under cron .
pay special attention to IFS , PATH , LD_LIBRARY , and PERL*
set in crontab :
min hour * * * env > /tmp/env
and examine /tmp/env

You got it right mate!

I did what you had suggested and got the below:

Code:

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin
PWD=/home/dileepp
SHLVL=1
HOME=/home/dileepp
LOGNAME=dileepp
_=/usr/bin/env

So the shell is different while executing the script from cron.
Can you advise me how i can set it a particular shell so as the cron to use it
while executing a script?


Regards
Dileep

I am not sure that difference between bash and sh ( BTW check what really /bin/sh is ! It can be link ) will garble your output .

Try giving /bin/bash scriptname while defining in the crontab file and see if that helps.