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Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:19:37 -0700
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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Subject: Re: sourcing a perl script on cygwin
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Florin Barbalau wrote:

> thanks for the explication. so I should understand that I can never
> run a perl script like this in order to set environment variables for
> the calling one ?
> 
> I am very surprised about this problem because this is in the
> installation of an Oracle patch.

I don't see how that could ever possibly hope to work.  In order to
execute perl, you have to create a perl process.  Any changes to the
environment that that perl process makes will be completely discarded
when it exits, i.e. it's impossible for a child to modify a parent's
environment.

Are you sure that the perl script wasn't intended to be the parent
process of the shell, i.e. it sets up a modified environment and then
drops you in a (sub)shell with those changes?  If that's the case then
simply execing the perl script should work.

Brian

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