storing system function output

[karthigayan]

Hi monks ,
I have a doubt in system function.I want to store the system functions output to a variable.
For example,
system("ls");
Here I want all the file names in the current directory to store in a variable.I know that I can do this by redirecting the output into a file and read from that and store that to a variable.But I want a efficient way than that.Is there any way . Thanks in advance .

[Ratazong]

Use backticks. See this example (conveniently using ls ;-)

[marto]

You've posted in the wrong section off the forum, read Where should I post X?, as suggested every time you post something.

[wwe]

Hi, take a look at IPC::Run3 (http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/IPC-Run3-0.043/lib/IPC/Run3.pm). This module allows you to run processes and redirect/capture thier output.

[doug]

system doesn't glue in STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR, so you'll have to do that on your own. Generally use the open with a bar (pipe character) to launch programs where you need to capture the output. Try RTFM:

perldoc -f open

I don't think I'd ever launch ls as a child process because it is too easy to get that information on your own. opendir and readdir work will do nearly anything that you need for filenames. And for this particular case, there is a specialised tool for that:

my @files = glob("/path/to/directory/*");

The docs for opendir, readdir, closedir and glob are all in perlfunc so you can use perldoc -f OP to view them.

- doug