From: Kyle Schmitt <kyleaschmitt@...>
Date: 2008-08-02T04:32:43+09:00
Subject: Capturing shell command output and success?

I know shell commands have beaten to death on this list, but searching
the archives I couldn't quite find what I was looking for.

I want a way to capture the output of the shell command, and the
success or failure of it.

Of course I've used system("") and %x, and I have been successful in
getting the return code using @?, although something about it rubs me
the wrong way.  Not the least of which is that standard error isn't
captured by anything.

In the case of what I'm doing now, I'd like to shell out to tar, have
an error returned to me if tar doesn't complete successfully, AND have
the output of tar for parsing.

Is there a clean mechanism to do this?

Thanks
--Kyle