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Executing External Commands The Open Function

The open() function may be called with a trailing or leading pipe | symbol in order to

• Read the output from one or more commands
  open( README, "ls -l |" );
  $line = <README>;

• Write to the input of one or more commands
  open( WRITEME, "| Mail -s 'test' joe@foo.com" );
  print WRITEME "Dear John,\n";