note Albannach Just to combine the above [id://542838|correct] [id://542837|answers] into a working solution which does work under Windows (I used <code>del</code> for simplicity but the effect is the same): <code> $cmd = 'del nonexistent.file'; chomp($res = `$cmd 2>&1`); print "\n[Command is :: ", $cmd, "]\n[RESULT:: ", $res,"]\n\n"; </code><p> Which prints: <code> [Command is :: del nonexistent.file] [RESULT:: Could Not Find C:\My Documents\foo\Perl\dl\debug\nonexistent.file]</code> <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-33341"> <p>--<br> I'd like to be able to assign to an luser </div></div> 542812 542812