portable /dev/null ?

[Larry]

I want to run an external command using "system" but discard its
standard output. I know under *nix I could do:

system 'myCmd > /dev/null';

and Windows:

system 'myCmd > nul';

but is there a more portable way to do that?

 

[Jürgen Exner]

I want to run an external command using "system" but discard its
standard output. I know under *nix I could do:

system 'myCmd > /dev/null';

and Windows:

system 'myCmd > nul';

but is there a more portable way to do that?

If you would drop your requirement of using system(), then you could use
backticks and capture (and then discard) the output in your Perl program.

jue

 

[Larry]

If you would drop your requirement of using system(), then you could use
backticks and capture (and then discard) the output in your Perl program.

jue

I thought of the backticks method, but I remember that being a problem
in Windows the last time i tried it. Also, even if backticks works, I
would prefer an option that discarded the output immediately, so that
memory is not wasted if the output is large.

 

[Andreas Pürzer]

Maybe you're looking for File::Spec->devnull() ?

I thought of the backticks method, but I remember that being a problem
in Windows the last time i tried it.

perl -e "print `echo foo > nul`"
works fine here.

HTH,
Andreas Pürzer

 

[Paul Lalli]

I want to run an external command using "system" but discard its
standard output. I know under *nix I could do:

system 'myCmd > /dev/null';

and Windows:

system 'myCmd > nul';

but is there a more portable way to do that?

IIRC, the IO::All module has a devnull() method. You might want to
look into it. The module is available on the CPAN.

Paul Lalli

 

[Sisyphus]

I want to run an external command using "system" but discard its
standard output. I know under *nix I could do:

system 'myCmd > /dev/null';

and Windows:

system 'myCmd > nul';

but is there a more portable way to do that?

You could use File::Spec. Then the code becomes (untested):

my $devnull = File::Spec->devnull();
system("myCmd > $devnull"); # should be portable

Cheers,
Rob