Capture output from system commands

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

is there an easy way for perl to capture the output of system commands? for example: if i wanted to put the output of "ls -l" into a Tk textbox, how would i do it? right now i have to do it like this.

system("$got > hold");
open(FLE, "hold");
$text->insert('1.0', <FLE>);
[download]

_{janitored by ybiC: Retitle from "Reading from the screen"}

Comment on Capture output from system commands Download Code

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Re: Reading from the screen by ysth (Canon) on Nov 18, 2003 at 02:22 UTC
Try `$text->insert('1.0', qx[$got])`.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Reading from the screen by Anonymous Monk on Nov 18, 2003 at 02:42 UTC
thanks, it worked, but could you explain how qx does it?	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Reading from the screen by Roger (Parson) on Nov 18, 2003 at 02:56 UTC
The 'qx' keyword is just another way to write the back quote (`). The code - `$n = qx/ $got /;` [download] is equivalent to $n = `$got`; [download] What it does is to execute the `$got` command, and capture its output to a scalar. You should have a look on CPAN perlop under the section "Quote and Quote-like Operators". Update: Thanks to ysth to point out my typo.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Reading from the screen by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Nov 18, 2003 at 10:14 UTC
is there an easy way for perl to capture the output of system commands? Nope, not possible. If it was, it would have been documented with `perldoc -f system`, and you did read that, didn't you? Abigail	[reply]