storing system function output

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

Hi monks ,
I have a doubt in system function.I want to store the system functions output to a variable.
For example,
system("ls");
Here I want all the file names in the current directory to store in a variable.I know that I can do this by redirecting the output into a file and read from that and store that to a variable.But I want a efficient way than that.Is there any way . Thanks in advance .

Comment on storing system function output

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: storing system function output by Ratazong (Monsignor) on Mar 10, 2010 at 09:50 UTC
Use backticks. See this example (conveniently using ls ;-)	[reply]
A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
Re: storing system function output by marto (Cardinal) on Mar 10, 2010 at 09:57 UTC
You've posted in the wrong section off the forum, read Where should I post X?, as suggested every time you post something.	[reply]
Re: storing system function output by wwe (Friar) on Mar 10, 2010 at 16:13 UTC
Hi, take a look at IPC::Run3 (http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/IPC-Run3-0.043/lib/IPC/Run3.pm). This module allows you to run processes and redirect/capture thier output.	[reply]
Re: storing system function output by doug (Pilgrim) on Mar 12, 2010 at 14:58 UTC
`system` doesn't glue in STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR, so you'll have to do that on your own. Generally use the `open` with a bar (pipe character) to launch programs where you need to capture the output. Try RTFM: `perldoc -f open` [download] I don't think I'd ever launch `ls` as a child process because it is too easy to get that information on your own. `opendir` and `readdir` work will do nearly anything that you need for filenames. And for this particular case, there is a specialised tool for that: `my @files = glob("/path/to/directory/");` [download] The docs for `opendir`, `readdir`, `closedir` and `glob` are all in perlfunc* so you can use `perldoc -f OP` to view them. - doug	[reply] [d/l] [select]