Perl - capture system() error

Question

I am converting some jpg images to png w/ imagemagick & have the following in perl:

system("convert $jpg $png");
print "$?\n";

Is there a way to capture the actual errors from imagemagick (rather than just whether or not it executed successfully as I have in the code above)?

note: I use imagemagick solely as an example....this is more a general question on how to capture errors from whatever program that system() executes.

thx!

Answer 1

For best results see: How-can-I-capture-STDERR-from-an-external-command?

Also read the previous one:

Why can't I get the output of a command with system()?

Answer 2

cribbed from the IPC::Run manpage:

use IPC::Run qw{run timeout};
my ($in, $out, $err);

run [convert => ($jpg, $png)], \$in, \$out, \$err, timeout( 10 ) or die "$err (error $?)"

You could also use PerlMagick like this:

use Image::Magick;

my $p = new Image::Magick;
$p->Read($jpg);
$p->Write($png);