--- a/scripts/ChangeLog	Mon Mar 31 21:41:30 2008 -0400
+++ b/scripts/ChangeLog	Mon Mar 31 22:06:02 2008 -0400
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2008-04-01  Julian Schnidder  <j.schnidder@gmx.de>
+
+	* miscellaneous/perl.m: New function.
+	* miscellaneous/Makefile.in (SOURCES): Add it to the list.
+
 2008-03-31  David Bateman  <dbateman@free.fr>
 
 	* plot/gtext.m: New function to place text on a plot.

--- a/scripts/miscellaneous/Makefile.in	Mon Mar 31 21:41:30 2008 -0400
+++ b/scripts/miscellaneous/Makefile.in	Mon Mar 31 22:06:02 2008 -0400
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
   fileattrib.m fileparts.m flops.m fullfile.m getfield.m gunzip.m gzip.m \
   info.m inputname.m ismac.m ispc.m isunix.m license.m list_primes.m ls.m \
   ls_command.m menu.m mex.m mexext.m mkoctfile.m movefile.m \
-  namelengthmax.m news.m orderfields.m pack.m paren.m parseparams.m \
+  namelengthmax.m news.m orderfields.m pack.m paren.m parseparams.m perl.m\
   run.m semicolon.m setfield.m single.m substruct.m swapbytes.m tar.m \
   tempdir.m tempname.m texas_lotto.m unix.m unpack.m untar.m \
   unzip.m ver.m version.m warning_ids.m what.m xor.m zip.m

--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/scripts/miscellaneous/perl.m	Mon Mar 31 22:06:02 2008 -0400
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+## Copyright (C) 2008 Julian Schnidder
+##
+## This file is part of Octave.
+##
+## Octave is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at
+## your option) any later version.
+##
+## Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
+## WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
+## General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, see
+## <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} {[@var{output}, @var{status}] =} perl (@var{scriptfile})
+## @deftypefnx {Function File} {[@var{output}, @var{status}] =} perl (@var{scriptfile}, @var{argument1}, @var{argument2}, ...)
+## Invoke perl script @var{scriptfile} with possibly a list of
+## command line arguments.
+## Returns output in @var{output} and status
+## in @var{status}.
+## @seealso{system}
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function [output, status] = perl (script = "-e ''", varargin = {})
+
+  if (ischar (script)
+      && ((nargin != 1 && iscellstr (varargin))
+	  || (nargin == 1 && ! isempty (script))))
+    [status, output] = system (cstrcat ("perl ", script,
+					sprintf (" %s", varargin{:})));
+  else
+    error ("perl: invalid arguments");
+  endif
+
+endfunction