Perl script runs in terminal but doesn't run when invoked from Java program

Question

I was running a Perl script that replaces a string with another:

perl -pi.back -e \'s/str1/str2/g;\' path/to/file1.txt

When I run this co

Answer 1

exec uses StringTokenizer to parse the command, which apparently just splits on whitespace.

Take for example the following shell command (similar but different than yours):

perl -pi.back -e 's/a/b/g; s/c/d/g;' path/to/file1.txt

For it, StringTokenizer produces the following command and arguments:

• perl (command)
• -pi.back
• -e
• 's/a/b/g;
• s/c/d/g;'
• path/to/file1.txt

That's completely wrong. The command and arguments should be

• perl (command)
• -pi.back
• -e
• s/a/b/g; s/c/d/g; (Note the lack of quotes.)
• path/to/file1.txt

You could pass those above to exec(String[] cmdarray). Or if you don't have the option of parsing the command, you could actually invoke a shell to parse it for you by passing the following to exec(String[] cmdarray):

• sh (command)
• -c
• perl -pi.back -e 's/a/b/g; s/c/d/g;' path/to/file1.txt