http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=144406


in reply to Obtaining the output of a system call, not the return status

You probably want to use backticks AKA qx:
my $html = `echo $plaintext | txt2html --extract`; # -- or -- my $html = qx(echo $plaintext | txt2html --extract); # where the ()s can be any seperator you can use on qw(), etc.
However, you might find it better to do this sort of thing with IPC::Open2, especially if $plaintext is going to contain stuff that you don't want to pass to the shell:
use IPC::Open2; my($read_fh,$write_fh); my $pid = open2($read_fh,$write_fh,"txt2html","--extract"); print $write_fh $plaintext; close $write_fh; my $html = do { local $/; <$read_fh> }; # or you can use a while(<$read_fh>) { ... } loop. waitpid $pid, 0; # don't leave "zombies"