There's a very simple way to do it in Perl: 
my $prog_output = `shell_command 2&>1`;
print "OUTPUT: $prog_output\n";

[download]
At least this is what I have in a few of my smaller scripts (mostly throw-away) running in tcsh shell. The '2&>1' simply makes it so that all the error messages produced by the script (printed to the STDERR file handler) will also be 'sent' to STDOUT and consequently received by our script.

There are of course other much better approaches. For example, take a look at vroom's explanation here. Or also take a look at the Perl interprocess communication document, especially the 'Using open() for IPC' section ;-)



_____________________ 
# Under Construction

[download]

In reply to Re: running an outside script by vladb
in thread running an outside script by hamburger-pimp

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.