UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Good morning,
I am 100% mew to Unix and am trying to troubleshoot why a pgm written 3 years ago, suddenly is not working properly. It is part Perl with some UNIX commands thrown in. I need to verify what the UNIX commands are doing before I can continue with my other troubleshooting.

Code:

print "<pre>";
print system("cat tmp\\*.log | c:\\wbin\\sort.exe -k 3 -r");
print "</pre>";

After searching for a few days I was able to determine the above is referencing UNIX. This is what I think is going on - and am looking for verification of this PLEASE!!

Moving all material from the tmp folder with the extension of .log into the UNIX sort pgm and performing the sort function. The sort pgm is being called using the new style of sorting (-k) in reverse order (-r) and sorting on the 3rd field in the files.

Can someone verify that for me???

Thank you for any and all your time with helping me to understand this short piece of code.

Amy

Code:

cat tmp\\*.log | c:\\wbin\\sort.exe -k 3 -r

Its combining all the tmp log files and the output of them is sorted by the 3rd column in reverse order.
good luck with dis

OK....I understand what this is doing - BUT I have an error that is preventing this execute fully. The error message is: cat' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

I have the cat.exe application stored in two areas on the server - within the c:\WindowsSystem32 folder and also in the c:\wbin folder. Is there anywhere else this should be moved/copied to? Is there another piece I am missing to have cat recognized and run successfully? I have also added the cat.exe application to the system32 folder on the local machine that is trying to run the script and that did not resolve the issue either.

Thanks in advance!!

Code:

c:\\wbin\\cat.exe tmp\\*.log | c:\\wbin\\sort.exe -k 3 -r

A few guesses:
- different person (user) running
- a change to the PATH command (PATH is where the system look for programs not resident in current directory)
- change to user permissions and/or file & directory rights not allowing you to find the CAT program

Amy,

You will get the same error if you go to command prompt and try to execute anything that doesn't exist. For example, go to C:\ and type "Hello", you will get the same error.

This is a matter of Windows not being able to find the cat command. Resolve that, and the code will run.

Joeyg had a good suggestion, if it's not in the PATH suddenly, it won't be automagically found. If this is a new concept for you I suggest reading on general operating system concepts.

Thank you for all the assistance! Once I added the PATH info it works great! I do have one more question now that I have gotten back to working on this. If I wanted this to put the combined sorted info into a text file, is this the correct format? I am not getting any data in the file and this is why I would like to ask.

Code:

c:\\wbin\\cat.exe tmp\\*.log | c:\\wbin\\sort.exe -k 3 -r > c:\\TLlogs.txt

Error Message: c:\\wbin\\cat.exe: write error: Invalid argument

Thank again for all the help with my adding the PATH location info correctly - and for any assistance with this one!!