How can I translate a shell script to Perl?

Question

I have a shell script, pretty big one. Now my boss says I must rewrite it in Perl. Is there any way to write a Perl script and use the existing shell code as is in my Perl scrip

Answer 1

I don't know what's in your shell script, but don't forget there are tools like

1. a2p - awk-to-perl
2. s2p - sed-to-perl

and perhaps more. Worth taking a look around.

You may find that due to Perl's power/features, it's not such a big job, in that you may have been jumping through hoops with various bash features and utility programs to do something that comes out of Perl natively.

Like any migration project, it's useful to have some canned regression tests to run with both solutions, so if you don't have those, I'd generate those first.