Ifconfig error capture

[WalkingZero]

Hello all. I am having difficulty with a spot of code. I have a feeling the answer is simple, and i am being stupid for missing it. In the code below I am running a call to ifconfig to change the mac address of the adapter to one in the given variable. I am trying to check for the error code "SIOCSIFHWADDR: Invalid Argument" When i run the backquoted command though, it does not capture the error code when it comes up. It always returns an empty set. I'd appreciate some help in understanding why this is and what I could do to get around it. I've included the relevant snippet of code below.

$code=`ifconfig eth0 hw ether $mac`;
print "Returned error: $code \n";
if $code="SIOCSIFHWADDR: Invalid Argument"{&CMac;}

The conditional statement includes a recursive call to the function it is a part of. The idea is that it keeps attempting to change the MAC address until it hits a valid one. Unfortunately the $code variable always come up empty.

[kyle]

The message you're looking for comes out on STDERR, but the backticks only capture what comes out on STDOUT. What you can do is have the shell redirect the error stream to the normal output stream like so:

$code = `ifconfig eth0 hw ether $mac 2>&1`;

[WalkingZero]

Oy! I knew it was something obvious. I actually had to redirect STDERR and also send STDOUT to /dev/null to properly capture the data, but once that was done i just turned my conditional slightly. using an unless statement to check if the $code was null or not. Thank you very much for helping me get past my own idiocy.