Hi, this is straight from Dr. Stein's excellent Network Programming in Perl book:

print "redirecting STDOUT\n";
open (SAVEOUT, ">&STDOUT");
open (STDOUT, ">$file") or die "Can't open $file: $!";

#STDOUT is now redirected
system "diff $old_file $file";

open (STDOUT, ">&SAVEOUT");
print "STDOUT is back to normal!\n";
[download]

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)