grep doesn't work from system(), but does from terminal, how to fix?

Hello,

As part of a script to fix port-orders (yes, I know, we could have a whole debate about port-order or terminal order, but let's park that for now...) I want to automatically process a CDL netlist file using a combination of grep and sed, in order to create a new file which will be used by the SKILL script. This is the tried and tested command which does exactly what I want, and it runs perfectly from a terminal:

grep -Pzo '.SUBCKT P.+\n.*' ./scripts/io_gppr_cln22ul_t25_mv09_mv33_fs33_svt_dr.cdl | grep -v '^*' | sed 's#.SUBCKT ##' | sed -z 's#\n+##g' | sed 's#  # #g' | sed 's# #,#g' > termOrder.input

It reads a CDL netlist file, looks for all lines that start with ".SUBCKT P", selects this whole line AND the next line. The second grep removes all lines which start with a "*". Multiple sed commands are used to remove the ".SUBCKT P" part, replace a new-line and + with nothing, replacing double spaces with single spaces and finally it replaces all (now single) spaces by a ",". This all is stored in the file termOrder.input.

This all works from the same terminal from which I launch Virtuoso.

Since I want to automate this into the script, I tried the following in the CIW:

sourceNetlist = "/users/sh033860/workarea/xp4000/scripts/io_gppr_cln22ul_t25_mv09_mv33_fs33_svt_dr.cdl"
command = strcat("grep -Pzo '.SUBCKT P.+\n.*' " sourceNetlist " | grep -v '^*' | sed 's#.SUBCKT ##' | sed -z 's#\n+##g' | sed 's#  # #g' | sed 's# #,#g' > termOrder.input" )
system( command )

And this fails... The output in the terminal is:

[tsmcN22@utc0vnc002 cds]$ grep: the -P option only supports a single pattern
sed: -e expression #1, char 2: unterminated `s' command

However, when I first open a terminal from the CIW by doing this:

system( "xterm" )

And then, in this new terminal past the same line as constructed by command = ....., it works.

I truly hope someone can explain to my why it doesn't work from using system( command ), but it works manually. It would be very handy to be able to automate this step (and I will use this more often in the future).

Having said that, if something like this can be done fairly easily using SKILL (reading a CDL file and processing it on the fly), I'm more than happy to do it like that.

Many thanks in advance.

With kind regards,

Sjoerd