You can use backticks also: 
$text = `$Globals::pdftotext_bin -layout $pdffile -`;
if ($?) {
  log_error(...)
}

[download]

In reply to Re^2: How to invoke pdftotext and extract first line of text from PDF file? by brycen
in thread How to invoke pdftotext and extract first line of text from PDF file? by punch_card_don

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