Set a shell array from an array in Perl script

Question

I have the following Perl script:

 sub {
    my $sequence=\"SEQUENCE1\";
    my $sequence2=\"SEQUENCE2\";
    my @Array = ($sequence, $sequence2);
    return \\@         


        

Answer 1

You can't return an array. The concept makes no sense since print produces a stream of bytes, not variables.

---

One solution is to output a text representation of the array and have the shell parse it.

For example,

$ IFS=$'\n' array=( $(
   perl -e'
      my @array = ("a b", "c d", "e f");
      print "$_\n" for @array;
   '
) )

$ echo ${#array[@]}
3

$ echo "${array[1]}"
c d

This particular implementation assumes your array can't contain newlines.

---

The other alternative is to print out shell code that recreates the array and eval that code in the shell.

For example,

$ eval "array=( $(
   perl -e'
      use String::ShellQuote qw( shell_quote );
      my @array = ("a b", "c d", "e f");
      print join " ", map shell_quote($_), @array;
   '
) )"

$ echo ${#array[@]}
3

$ echo "${array[1]}"
c d

This is a robust solution.