Streaming stdout from a qx subprocess

Question

I have a large number of scripts that need to executed. I like to watch the output of said scripts as they go by for debugging purposes.

Typically a print qx/foo/ gathers foo's stdout output until foo is done, then prints it.

I'd like to stream it out, so that I can watch foo's output go by, and capture the output of foo in some scalar.

Ideally:

$cmd = "foo";
$result = stream_and_store($cmd);

I'm reasonably sure there are some sophisticated methods out there, including some nifty CPAN modules.

I'd like to be able to do it in base Perl 5.8.8 (yep, antique, but that's the environment) without adding in other dependencies.

Answer 1

Be careful what you wish for:

$output = `somecmd | tee /dev/tty`;

Answer 2

my $result = '';
open my $proc, '-|', "foo";
while (<$proc>) {
    print $_;
    $result .= $_;
}

This form of the open command launches a process in the background, and makes its output available in the filehandle $proc.