http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=970994


in reply to How to pass the output into an array

`Back-ticks`, or qx, redirects the external program's stdout stream back into perl. Used in list context you get one element for each line of output:
my @output = `some_external_excutable_file $input`;
Of course you should be careful that there is not so much output that it busts memory.