What does $^O contain (see perlvar $^O). Failing that Mac::OSVersion.

Oh, I missed this module!!! I will give it a try. Seems what I need.

That information should be easily accessible using System::Info, which should work on most (if not all) supported OS's:

$ perl -MData::Dumper -MSystem::Info=sysinfo_hash -wE'print Dumper (sy
+sinfo_hash)'
$VAR1 = {
          'cpu_cores' => '2',
          'cpu' => 'Mac mini (2 GHz)',
          'hostname' => 'myhostname.local',
          'osname' => 'Darwin',
          'distro' => 'Darwin 17.0.0',
          'cpu_type' => 'x86_64',
          'osvers' => '17.0.0',
          'os' => 'darwin - 17.0.0 (Mac OS X - macOS 10.13 (17A365))',
          'cpu_count' => '1 [2 cores]'
        };
[download]

Hi Tux, it looks like there 'osvers' also means 'build version', rather than 'OS version,' and the string that the OP needs ("10.13") is buried in the 'os' value. Of course one could fish it out of there, but in this case I think I prefer the simplicity of a shell call: qx/sw_vers -productVersion/. If the function had to be portable, I might use the module you show, but with the parsing code needed for each OS, it seems like one might as well have conditionally executed shell calls.



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa for waiting so long to implement something so simple. I needed access to a Mac to test it, but it is just released as 0.059:

mac01 $ perl -Mblib examples/sysinfo.pl
-- from methods
Distname             : mac01.local darwin - 17.0.0 (Mac OS X - macOS 1
+0.13 (17A365)) Mac mini (2 GHz) 1 [2 cores] x86_64
Hostname             : mac01.local
Number of CPU's      : 1 [2 cores]
Processor type       : x86_64
Processor description: Mac mini (2 GHz)
OS and version       : darwin - 17.0.0 (Mac OS X - macOS 10.13 (17A365
+))
-- from hash
cpu                  : Mac mini (2 GHz)
cpu_cores            : 2
cpu_count            : 1 [2 cores]
cpu_type             : x86_64
distro               : Darwin 10.13
hostname             : mac01.local
os                   : darwin - 17.0.0 (Mac OS X - macOS 10.13 (17A365
+))
osname               : Darwin
osvers               : 10.13
[download]


Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

Hi, those names are just marketing brands. The version of your OS is numeric. Perl has knows what it is via the configuration with which your perl was built. The build configuration can be accessed with the Config module.

On macOS Sierra:

$ perl -MConfig -E 'say for @Config{qw/osname osvers/}'
darwin
16.7.0
[download]

Update: The perl Config module returns the macOS build version, not the product version, at the time Perl was built. See my follow-up node for more info.

Hope this helps!

True about the commercial names. What is important is 16.7.0 and so on. However, I need a way to get it independently of the OS Perl has been build on. Am am giving my users application and Perl bundled together for easier deployment. From this application with its own Perl I need to get the osvers of the macOS.

That should be simple enough. The host OS will have Perl installed (as far as I know it has been installed by default since the first OS X). Have your app's perl find out where the system perl is (maybe a system call to which perl?) and then use that perl to examine its Config.

Hope this helps!



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

"What is important is 16.7.0 and so on."

Are you sure about that? 16.7.0 (and darwin) refer to the Kernel Version:

[Note: I'm using Sierra 10.12.5.]

$ system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType
Software:

    System Software Overview:

      System Version: macOS 10.12.5 (16F73)
      Kernel Version: Darwin 16.6.0
      ...
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It sounds like you really want the System Version. If so, and you only want the version number, this might be easier:

$ sw_vers -productVersion
10.12.5
[download]

To get at this information, you can use backticks, qx{}, open with '-|' mode, and other methods (the open doco has links to some of these). And, of course, add appropriate error handling.

Mac::OSVersion (already suggested by ++marto) uses both of those commands with backticks. It also provides a name() method; however, the names are hard-coded:

my @names = qw( Cheetah Puma Jaguar Panther Tiger Leopard ) ;
push @names, 'Snow Leopard', 'Lion', 'Mountain Lion',
        'Mavericks', 'Yosemite', 'El Capitan', 'Sierra',
        'High Sierra', 'Mojave';
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There's a potential problem with this. When Apple releases a new (named) version, that module will need to be updated, you'll need to upgrade to that updated version, and your users may need a similar upgrade.

If you wanted to handle the names yourself, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201260 has a list of names and version numbers. It looks like this information is kept up-to-date: it was last updated a month ago.

— Ken