in reply to Retrieving information from an executable program

The easiest way is to use backticks (or qx):

my $number = "2301";
my @output = `./retrive $number`;
chomp @output; # remove line endings

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The second step would be then to separate the keys and values into pairs. This is easiest done with split:

use Data::Dumper;
my %data;
for my $line (@output) {
    my ($key, $value) = split /:/, $line, 2;
    $data{ $key } = $value;
};
print Dumper \%data;

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Re^2: Retrieving information from an executable program
by kitifu (Initiate) on Jul 25, 2010 at 18:58 UTC
    Thanks for your quick reply. I will give it a try. Now suppose I want to set two parameters, say 
    my $name=;
my $status;

    [download]
    Is there a way of assigning them inside a for loop, say using switch or if-else

    Sam

[reply]
[d/l]

      No, there basically is no way to assign your variables that way. Well, you could store the names and references in a hash and then use that:

      my ($name, $status, $cid);
my %vars = (
    'NAME' => \$name,
    'CID'  => \$cid,
    'STATUS' => \$status,    
);

for my $line (@output) {
    my ($key, $val) = split /:/, $line, 2;
    if ($vars{ $key }) {
        ${ $vars{ $key } } = $val;
    } else {
        warn "Unknown key '$key', discarded";
    };
};

      [download]

      I'm not sure whether that's worth the trouble though.

[reply]
[d/l]
        You are correct, it seems nothing is populated in @output variable 
        CID:2301
NAME: Jane
STATUS=OK
$VAR1 = [];

        [download]

        May you please advice how i can get @output filled by ./retrieve 2301
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Hello Corion
        May you please advice how i can assign this $vars{ $key } to my own variable, say my $newstatus=$status or something like that. I want to do some extra manipulation with the retrieved data?

        Sam

[reply]
[d/l]

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