It's really much easier than you think.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use diagnostics ;
use strict ;

open (DIR, '>> c:\dir\dir.txt') || die "Can't open file; $!" ;

print DIR $_ foreach `dir *.pl`;

close DIR;
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Update: Removed unnecessary comma from print statement.

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

Thanks yours worked!

FYI the comma on line 7 (print DIR,) stopped the script from compiling.

lmoran@wtsgSPAM.com print "\x{263a}"

Be careful what you ask for -- you may just wind up getting it. Are you really sure you want the exact output of the dir command, or do you just want the names of the files, or the date and/or the size as well. That is, do you expect to have to parse the output downstream to do something else with it?

If this is the case, you are better off doing to internally in Perl, thereby saving the time it takes to launch off the sub-process as well as the time it takes to parse the results.

For instance, if you want to gather the names of the files and their respective sizes, you could do something like:

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
my $dir = shift || '.';
opendir D, $dir or die "Cannot open dir $dir: $!\n";
my %size;
while( defined( my $file = readdir(D) )) {
  # only makes sense to ask for the size of a file
  next unless -f $file;
  $size{$file} = (stat $file)[7];
}
closedir D;
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And there you have it. If you want to save different information, look at the stat function stat. If you need to recurse directories (i.e. emulate dir's -s switch), take a look at File::Find. If you need to store more than one thing (e.g. the date and the size) then it would be a good time to learn about references (perldoc perlreftut and perldoc perlref).

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

open (DIR, '>> c:\dir\dir.txt') || die "Can't open file; $!" ;
my $dir = `dir *.pl`;
print DIR $dir;
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sorry (didn't mean to imply that it didn't)yours worked too.

lmoran@wtsgSPAM.com
print "\x{263a}"

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
## ^^^^  change to your system needs.

# for the best results in all your perl scripting
# use strict. :)

use strict;

# edit these to match your needs.  Remember
# for dos, you will need to change the '/'s
# to '\'s

my $path = "/tmp";
my $file = "$ENV{HOME}/file.txt";

# open our descriptors.  One for the directory
# we need to read and one for the file in which
# we will spool the directory information out to.

opendir(DIR,$path) or die("Cannot open $path\n");
open(OP,">>$file") or die("Cannot open $file for writing\n");

# print out all files matching *.pl to file
# descriptor OP (output) from reading the 
# DIR descriptor pointing back to $path.

print OP join("\n",grep(/.*\.pl/,readdir(DIR)));

# close our descriptors

close(DIR);
close(OP);
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For the above example, you may need to change the $path and $file variables to work for your windows machine but the rest *should* work just fine.

Edited by Snafu 1607 HRS EDT for completeness

----------
- Jim

my $output = `dir/b/x *.pl`;
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my $output = `dir/b/x *.pl > c:\dir\dir.txt`;
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Why not:

:
:
open FOUT,">> c:\dir\dir.txt" or die "couldn't open for writing: $!";
open PIPE,"dir |" or die "can't pipe!$!";
while ($line=<PIPE>){

    chomp $line;
         # do something with it...
    printf FOUT "%s$/",$line; # or whatever
}

close FOUT;
close PIPE;
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i have to advise against use of backticks (`) on windows platforms; some commands may cause serious heartache. (i know you said this one works on NT, but unfortunately it's not a safe habit to get into.) As such, i'd re-evaluate what you really want and see if one of these solutions will do it or can be modified to do it.