perl-ipc-system-simple

Calling Perl's in-built 'system()' function is easy, determining if it was successful is _hard_. Let's face it, '$?' isn't the nicest variable in the world to play with, and even if you _do_ check it, producing a well-formatted error string takes a lot of work. 'IPC::System::Simple' takes the hard work out of calling external commands. In fact, if you want to be really lazy, you can just write: use IPC::System::Simple qw(system); and all of your 'system' commands will either succeed (run to completion and return a zero exit value), or die with rich diagnostic messages. The 'IPC::System::Simple' module also provides a simple replacement to Perl's backticks operator. Simply write: use IPC::System::Simple qw(capture); and then use the capture() command just like you'd use backticks. If there's an error, it will die with a detailed description of what went wrong. Better still, you can even use 'capturex()' to run the equivalent of backticks, but without the shell: use IPC::System::Simple qw(capturex); my $result = capturex($command, @args); If you want more power than the basic interface, including the ability to specify which exit values are acceptable, trap errors, or process diagnostics, then read on!