Re: 2.1.17 having issue with ExecResult() using pipelines

[Chip Seraphine]

nathan r. hruby wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Martin, Jason H wrote:
>
> > If yada isn't in the normal path then that might be a problem; I don't
> > know what PATH will be set to when that happens. Good point.
>
> Err.. right: here's the full real command:
>     CurrentLoad = ( ExecResult(/bin/sh -c "/bin/cat /proc/loadavg | 
> /bin/awk '{print $1}' | tr -d '\n'") )
>
> What I'm seeing in 2.1.17 is that everything after "/bin/cat" simply
> dissapears and thus no pipeline.  eg, run a ps -ef while this is runnning
> and the awk and tr are not being executed.  The above works in 2.1.14.


I've had similar problems (starting in 2.1.16, I think).  I've been able 
to workaround it by switching the order of quote nesting; in other words:

 thisworks= ( ExecResult(/bin/sh -c 'command1 "quotedarg" | command2') )

but

 thisnoworks= ( ExecResult(/bin/sh -c "command1 'quotedarg' | command2") )

In cases where I really neeed single quotes on the inside (as you do in 
your awk call), I've generally just punted and written little shell 
scripts for cfengine to call.  I could probably kludge it with special 
variables, but it gets nearly unreadable quickly.