shell read of val

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

hi , I am trying to get a shell script into perl.

command1|grep val | read val; if [[$val -eq 1]] then; do .. ; else ..;
+ fi;
[download]

But in perl when I have it in

$x = `command1|grep val | read val; echo $val; if [[$val -eq 1]] then;
+ do .. ; else ..; fi;`
[download]

In perl it doesnt echo val.

Please advice.

Thank you Intern guy