Use backticks, not system if you want to capture the output.

system runs a command and returns, exec run commands and never returns, backticks run the command and lets you capture the output.

perldoc is your friend. See the entries for system, exec and the perlop page for backticks.

system() doesn't return the output, just the exit status. There are other ways of executing programs that will give you the exit status. For instance, use open() with a pipe:

open(EXEC, '-|', 
    'ps', '-deaf | ', 'grep', 'httpd |', 'grep', 
    '-v', 'grep |', 'wc', '-l') 
    or die "Can't exec: $!\n";

# Now read the output just like a file
while(my $line = <EXEC>) {
    chomp $line;
    print "$line\n";
}
close(EXEC);
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Backticks and qx// also work:

my $input = `ps -deaf | grep httpd | grep -v grep | wc -l`;
my $input2 = qx/ps -deaf | grep httpd | grep -v grep | wc -l/; # Same 
+thing
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----
Reinvent a rounder wheel.

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @foo = `ps -deaf | grep httpd | grep -v grep | wc -l`;
foreach (@foo) {
    print;
}
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()-()
 \"/
  `

Ah cool! cheers for that guys! ;-)