How to redirect STDOUT to an array (not executing program)

rapide has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I was looking for a solution no how the standard filehandle STDOUT can be redirected to an array.
The STDOUT must be within the same program. e.g.


Module::printData;
my @data = STDOUT
[download]

I want to capture all the STDOUT information from the function "printData" without it printing to STDOUT.
Any suggestions?

Comment on How to redirect STDOUT to an array (not executing program) Download Code

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Re: How to redirect STDOUT to an array (not executing program) by cdarke (Prior) on Jan 18, 2009 at 11:55 UTC
Depending on how far you want to go with using CPAN modules, it is fairly easy to redirect STDOUT to a scalar, see open: `my $var; close STDOUT; open(STDOUT, '>', \$var) \|\| die "Unable to open STDOUT: $!"; print "Hollow World\n"; print "And another\n"; close (STDOUT); my @data = split "\n", $var; local $" = '\|'; print STDERR "<@data>\n";` [download] Beware that this does work for STDOUT in child processes.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: How to redirect STDOUT to an array (not executing program) by rapide (Beadle) on Jan 18, 2009 at 12:57 UTC
Great! Your example was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you	[reply]
Re: How to redirect STDOUT to an array (not executing program) by Corion (Patriarch) on Jan 18, 2009 at 11:44 UTC
Searching for STDOUT on CPAN yields several implementations of a tied STDOUT which allows you to capture/redirect output: IO::Capture::Stdout Tie::STDOUT IO::CaptureOutput	[reply]