Getting The Date Command to Redirect to File

dru145 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Monks,
I'm feeling like an idiot. I can't get the date to redirect to the file. It keeps printing out to the screen. I'm sure it's something obvious. Can someone put me out of my misery?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
 
my $date = system("date +%x_%T");
open (FILE, ">>output.txt") or die "Can't open output.txt\n";
print FILE "$date Script worked correctly\n";
close (FILE);
[download]

Thanks,
Dru
Another satisfied monk.

Comment on Getting The Date Command to Redirect to File Download Code

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Re: Getting The Date Command to Redirect to File by japhy (Canon) on Nov 22, 2002 at 16:29 UTC
That's because `system()` doesn't return the program's output; it merely executes a program (and what that program does with its output is its own thing). You'd want backticks (``) or `qx()`: `chomp(my $date = qx(date +%x_%T));` but there's no need to call the 'date' program when Perl has things to do it for you. See POSIX for the `strftime()` function: `use POSIX 'strftime'; my $date = strftime "%x_%T", localtime;` [download] _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area) `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Getting The Date Command to Redirect to File by fglock (Vicar) on Nov 22, 2002 at 16:26 UTC
use backticks: my $date = `date +%x_%T`; print " date is " . `date +%x` . " until midnight\n"; date is 11/22/02 until midnight [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Getting The Date Command to Redirect to File by vek (Prior) on Nov 22, 2002 at 16:30 UTC
`system` just returns success or failure, you cannot capture the output of the command you are running. Try backticks: my $date = `date +%x_%T`; [download] FWIW - you don't have to have the shell involved to do what you are attempting, there are many date functions/modules. -- vek --	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Getting The Date Command to Redirect to File by dru145 (Friar) on Nov 22, 2002 at 16:52 UTC
thanks everyone. Can someone demote me to level 2 :-) Thanks, Dru Another satisfied monk.	[reply]