Executing unix command in perl and getting the output

kirk123 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

How do yo execute a unix command in perl and get its output.

Unix command is:

ls -l $name | wc -l | sed 's/^ *//'
[download]

As you can see $name is a perl varible.

I know you have to use backtick.

I got error when I did it this way:

my $number = `ls -l $name | wc -l | sed 's/^ *//''
[download]

--kirk123

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Re: Executing unix command in perl and getting the output by Enlil (Parson) on Jan 14, 2003 at 00:20 UTC
you need another backtick at the end.From this: my $number = `ls -l $name \| wc -l \| sed 's/^ //''; [download] to this: my $number = `ls -l $name \| wc -l \| sed 's/^ //'`; [download] -enlil	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Executing unix command in perl and getting the output by rob_au (Abbot) on Jan 14, 2003 at 00:32 UTC
I must say I am curious why one would want to invoke an additional instance of the shell in order to perform this task when it could easily be carried out within Perl - For example the above shell call could be reduced to the following: `my $number = scalar @{[ glob $name ]};` [download] I have written about this topic before from a security perspective in the node - Think beyond Taint and warnings `perl -le 'print+unpack("N",pack("B32","00000000000000000000001000010110"))'`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Executing unix command in perl and getting the output by kirk123 (Beadle) on Jan 14, 2003 at 01:34 UTC
Actually, I was trying to execute the unix command lpstat -o and passing in the variable $name. Which is the result of another command and whose value I don't know. Thanks for input --kirk123	[reply]