Use backticks instead of system:

my $out = `eject -n`;
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(in case eject is writing to stdout, that is, otherwise redirect stderr to stdout (`eject -n 2>&1`)...)

The advice given by the other folks here is good, but I'd like to suggest using an alternate operator provided by Perl for just this purpose. Backticks are easily misread as single-quotes, so using this improves readability:

my $output = qx#/usr/bin/eject -n#;
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See perldoc perlop for more info about 'qx'.

Hi, i would like give some more information on this, if the output is more then one line, then use array to get the output.


my @output = qx(/usr/bin/eject -n);
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If you want to use system function then you can redirect your output to a file and read the file content. it might useful, when you running a program as a daemon.
The backtick and qx are same, you can use the following option to check your code.


perl -MO=Deparse <scriptname>.
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What would be the purpose of B::Deparse output? Just use the -c option to check syntax: perl -c file.

Use backquotes (or graves, or backticks, or whatever you want to call them). They are usually located to the left of the '1' key on your keyboard. They are on the same key as the tilde: ~

my $output = `eject -n`;
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And another alternative is to use open:

my $result;
# first open or die
open my $eject, '-|', 'eject -n' or die "Can't eject: $!\n";
# Then read in lineby line
while (<$eject>) {
    next unless /^device is/;
    # until the result is found
    $result= $_;
    last;
}
# done
close $eject;
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Especially when filtering output, I prefer this method because you can loop over the output line by line and react as soon as you found your searched input.

Hmmm... What does this do to a program that's still running when you "last" out of the loop? Like, say you're running a find, and want to kill the find as soon as it spots the thing it's looking for?
for(split(" ","tsuJ rehtonA lreP rekcaH")){print reverse . " "}print "\b.\n";

close $eject; will wait for the child to end (after closing pipes to the child?) If you wish to save it from doing extra work, you could ask it to end by sending a TERM signal to it before calling close. The return value of open '-|' is the child's PID.

close $eject; will wait for the child to end (after closing pipes to the child?) If you wish to save it from doing extra work, you could ask it to end by sending a TERM signal to it before calling close. The return value of open '-|' is the child's PID.