Since no one has brought it up, there is also Capture::Tiny. I use it almost exclusively when not needing to keep pipes around; ongoing reading and writing. Its docs are good so I won't paste a rehashed synopsis here. Though thinking about it, please use strict and declare your variables in the tightest possible scope in your real code. There are a couple schools of thought about doing it in sample code —the synopsis doesn't—and I see both views so won't take a side.