Return array value from one Perl script to another Perl script

Question

I have 2 scripts, say main_script.pl and secondary_script.pl

First I am running the main_script.pl which calls seconday_script.pl.

Code looks below for main_script.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $var1 = "val_1";
my $var2 = "val_2";

my $sec_script = "/home/shared/Vinod/Perl_Test/secondary_script.pl";
my $result = `perl $sec_script $var1 $var2`;

print "Result:$result\n";

secondary_script.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $arg1 = $ARGV[0];
my $arg2 = $ARGV[1];

....
....
# DO SOME OPEARTION BY USING THE ARGUMENTS PASSED FROM main_script.pl
# FINALLY CREATE AN ARRAY @data

print Dumper(\@data);

Here I can able to generate output in array @data. But how can I pass this @data values to main_script.pl so that it will get stored in result.

Since in main_script.pl I have declared result as an scalar variable. My data value from secondary_script.pl would be array, so should I make result as an array variable? and how can I capture the data in main_script.pl?

Answer 1

In the secondary script, you can join the values with a known seperator, say |. In het main script you can split the string you receive on that seperator to get your array.

To give an idea how that could work:

use Data::Dumper;

my @arr = ("1", "3", "", "5");    
my $result = join ('|', @arr);   # in secondary script. print to stdout 
print STDERR Dumper(split( /\|/, $result));  # in main script: undo join

There is an edge case: if the first or last string of the array is an empty string, it will get lost and you have to do some extra tricks to account for that.