So I have been struggling with a task to create a script which executes commands on remote hosts in parallel. While I have that working using the parallell::forkmanager module, I am getting whitespace from the command output that I have been unable to remove. One would think this would be simple but it eludes me. I have created the following sub to execute the commands and return the output as well as exit status. 

sub exitstatus {
##
# Exit Status Trap
# Arguments required: &exitstatus(cmd);
#
# Examples:
#   my ($output, $status) = &exitstatus('/bin/cp', '/somepath/somefile
+', '/some/new/location');
#   my ($output, $status) = &exitstatus($somecommand);
#
# Returns text output from the command as well as exit status.
##
    my $command = join ' ', @_ or die "No command specified\n";
    if ($debug) { print "command: $command\n"; }
    ($_ = qx{$command 2>&1}, $? >> 8); 
}

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And passing a simple command such as 'uptime', 'date' or 'hostname' gives me a leading space or a trailing carriage return that I am unable to remove with chomp or s/// SAMPLE OUTPUT: 
Running: 'hostname' on admin001:
admin001
 Running: 'uptime' on admin001:
 09:42:50 up 333 days, 22:24,  4 users,  load average: 0.05, 0.10, 0.3
+6
 Running: 'date -I' on admin001:
2014-05-29
 Running: 'hostname' on mon001:
mon001
 Running: 'uptime' on mon001:
 09:42:51 up 333 days, 22:23,  1 user,  load average: 1.18, 0.74, 0.57
 Running: 'date -I' on on001:
2014-05-29

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My question is this. Is there a way to trim the whitespace of the command output (both leading and trailing) without removing or conflicting with the exit status of the command. Every time I attempt to craft such code, I am met with the error message: 
Useless use of right bitshift (>>) in void context at - line 437.

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In reply to Erroneous Whitespace by lokista

Title:
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