brassmon_k, you are referring to opening a pipe to read process output. Unfortunately the syntax you suggest is the one for *supplying input* to the subprocess, which is not a common usage of pipes (your pipe character is the *first* character of the command).

Far more common is to run a command producing output which the perl code must process, using the pipe character ('|') as the *last* character of the command (e.g., open PH, "shell command|".).

Sample code follows:

open PH, "ps -ef|" or die "$!: opening pipe";
while (<PH>) {   # retrieves output from "ps" command one line at a ti
+me
  # .. process output--each line is $_ ..
}
close PH or die "$!: error closing pipe";

[download]

dmm

You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day ...
Or, you can teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime

In reply to Re(2): I may be remotely depressed. by dmmiller2k
in thread FTP question by maslas

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