hey I'm writing a perl script which writes it's own database, however, the script needs to be able to operate correctly even with the database missing. I dont want to deal with error messages when an open command fails, So my goal is to check for the database before I open it. The obvious choice is to use grep

From what I know of using system commands, I have to have it set up a such:

$grep=`grep file`;

I need to get a return value from grep, however. I'm gonna assume that the above used $grep scalar will store some type of return value from grep signifying whether or not the file was there, Could someone back this up and maybe tell me what return values i'll get for which options?

thanx

-Me

20041202 Edit by ysth; change title from: grep

In reply to Check whether a file exists by Anonymous Monk

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