Question

Hello guys i need to capture the output of an external command, herefore I use backquotes.
However when the command reaches a newline the output is ommitted. Where $_ = AD

@lines = `"C:/Program Files/Veritas/NetBackup/bin/admincmd/bppllist" $_ -U"`

Test: test1
Test: test2

Test: test3
Test: test4

The actual output:
@lines

Test: test1
Test: test2

Thank you for your time.

    print HTML "<h2 id='pol'>Policy Configuration\n</h2>" ;

  @bpllist =`"$admincmd/bppllist.exe"` or die print "$admincmd/bppllist.exe not found or could not be executed";
foreach (@bpllist) 
{
  print HTML "<div><table class='table'>\n";
  @lines = `"$admincmd/bppllist" $_ -U` or die print       "$admincmd/bpplinfo $_ -U not found or could not be executed";
   print HTML "\t<tr>\n\t<td><b>Policy name: <b></td><td>$_</td>\n\t</tr>\n" ;

  foreach (@lines) {

chop;
 ($var, $value) = split(/:/,$_,2);
 $var = "" if !defined($var);
 $value = "" if !defined($value);
print HTML "\t<tr>\n\t<td>$var</td><td>$value</td>\n\t</tr>\n" ;

  } 
  print HTML "</table></div>";
  }

The output of @bpllist:

  AD
  Sharepoint
  Echchange
  Vmware

Answer 1

Here’s how to capture the STDOUT & STDERR of a spawned process using backticks:

my $output = join('', `command arg1 arg2 arg3 2>&1`);

How it works has no dependence whatsoever on newlines in the output of command.

If you also need to send text to command‘s STDIN, then use IPC::Open3.

---

Cleaned your code up a bit. It works for me.

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.10.0;

# something missing here to set up HTML file handle
# something missing here to set up $admincmd

print HTML q{<h2 id='pol'>Policy Configuration\n</h2>};
my @bpllist = `"$admincmd/bppllist.exe"` 
  or die "$admincmd/bppllist.exe not found or could not be executed\n";
for my $policy (@bpllist) {
  print HTML q{<div><table class='table'>\n};
  my @lines = `$admincmd/bpplinfo.exe $policy -U 2>&1`;
  print HTML qq{\t<tr>\n\t<td><b>Policy name: <b></td><td>$policy</td>\n\t</tr>\n} ;
  for my $pair (@lines) {
    chomp($pair); # only remove newlines, not other characters
    my ($var, $value) = split /:/, $pair, 2;
    $var //= '';
    $value //= '';
    print HTML qq{\t<tr>\n\t<td>$var</td><td>$value</td>\n\t</tr>\n} ;
  }
  print HTML q{</table></div>};
}

Update 2

You appear to be doing this on windows?

I don’t think the 2>&1 trick will work there.