Nah, I meant this:

# $command can be any system command, that would produce an acceptable output
my $string = "my email is";
my $dir = "/home/erik/*";
my $command = "grep -ri '".$string."' ".$dir;
open(IN, $command." |");
my @IN = <IN>;
close(IN);

Better, Stephen? =) I agree, that opening dirs isn't the best purpose for this method.

Erik