Perl pipeline FAQ: How can I read output from a shell command pipeline (pipe) in a Perl script?
One of the great things about Perl is that it's very easy to run operating system commands, and read the output of those commands. Perl makes this process very easy and natural - it's just like reading data from a file. In this article we'll demonstrate the process of running external commands from within Perl, and then reading the output of those commands.