Quick Redirection Question

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

I've got a script that performs several expect operations. I'd like to suppress what the expect code is printing but still be able to print status-like information to STDOUT.

Here's what I've got:

foreach $one (@ARGV) {
    open(STDOUT, ">/dev/null");
    # Various expect statements that telnet to routers
    # listed in @ARGV and back up several files.
    close(STDOUT);

    # this is what I'd like to be printed to STDOUT.
    print "Done with backups for this machine.";
}
[download]

(I'm using expect rather than Net::Telnet because the backup commands that are run usually require additional input before returning a prompt.)

Is there any easy way direct output to either STDOUT or /dev/null?

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Re: Quick Redirection Question by traveler (Parson) on Apr 27, 2001 at 23:08 UTC
Expect.pm has: `$expect_prog->log_file("/dev/null");` [download] To do that. Or you can do this: `open SAVEOUT, ">&STDOUT"; open STDOUT, ">/dev/null"; # expect stuff here close STDOUT; open STDOUT, ">&SAVEOUT"; # normal talking to STDOUT here` [download] --traveler	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Quick Redirection Question by suaveant (Parson) on Apr 27, 2001 at 22:38 UTC
From what I've used of Expect, I think you should look into the options of expect... I believe it has various options for pointing the data where you want it. - Ant	[reply]