• 1 - script is not executable. Try chmod +x success.pl on Unix. On windows, you need to invoke scripts via perl.exe (from $^X)
• 2 - system does not capture output
• 3 - There is no OPEN function. Did you mean open? Probably not. You would read the contents of success.pl, but not execute it.
• 4 - like system, exec does not capture output, and it replaces the current process with another process. You will never reach the following print statement. Either exec() fails and die terminates your script, or exec() is successful and replaces the process with your script with the new process running success.pl.

You should really start reading the perl documentation. You might be interested in do, require, perlmod.

Alexander

First off, a potentially easier solution in a long-term sense may be to migrate the scripts you are calling into modules. This is of course not the question you asked, but something to consider.

Another possibility is reading in your script and using do to execute the code. See How to read code from file and execute it in loop ?.

Since you are trying to capture the output from another process, backticks should do what you want. It returns a string, so you should be assigning it to a scalar, but that should not have interfered with your syntax. Are you sure your success.pl script outputs to STDOUT? I suspect it's actually writing to STDERR, which still gets output to the screen on normal execution but is not captured by backticks. What happens when you try again, this time redirecting STDERR to STDOUT:

my $var =  `success.pl 2>&1`;
print $var;
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Update: This, of course, only works if you can run that command on the command line, i.e. your script is set executable. Otherwise, you should type:

my $var =  `perl success.pl 2>&1`;
print $var;
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See Quote Like Operators.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use IPC::Open3;

my $pid = open3(\*WRITE, \*READ, 0,"success.pl");
            #if \*ERROR is false, STDERR is sent to STDOUT 

#get the answer 
chomp(my $answer = <READ>);
print "query = $answer\n";

waitpid($pid, 1);
# It is important to waitpid on your child process,  
# otherwise zombies could be created.
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....or run a command interpreter like bash, and print commands to it

#!/usr/bin/perl 
use warnings;
use strict;
use IPC::Open3;

$|=1;

#my $pid=open3(\*IN,\*OUT,\*ERR,'/bin/bash');
my $pid=open3(\*IN,\*OUT,0,'/bin/bash');
# set \*ERR to 0 to send STDERR to STDOUT

my $cmd = 'date';

#send cmd to bash
print IN "$cmd\n";

my $result = <OUT>;
print $result;
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Normally you would NOT want to do this though. Perl can just run more perl — see do.

Maybe the reason backticks didn't work is because you are on Unix and "." is not in your path. This works.

$ ./2.pl
Hello
$ cat 1.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello\n";

$ cat 2.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

my $output = `./1.pl`;

print $output;
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EDIT: Not having "." in your PATH on a Unix box also explains the -1 return code you got from system(). The shell could not find the success.pl executable in your PATH.

Were I to guess you're running W32:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Success Ran Here";

=head

path\to\success>perl -e "@var=`success.pl`;print @var;\n"
Success Ran Here
path\to\success>

path\to\success>perl -e "@var=system(\"success.pl\") or die \"can\'t r
+un\";print \"@var \n\";"
Success Ran Here0

path\to\success>
    # the "0" is errno from system ie, no error;
    # were you executing this from the same dir as holds "success.pl"?

path\to\success>perl -e "@var=exec(\"success.pl\") or die \"can\'t run
+\";print \"@var \n\";"
    and...
path\to\success>perl -e "@var=exec (\"perl success.pl\") or die \"can\
+'t run\n\";print \"@var \n\";"

path\to\success>Success     
   # note the blank line before the last prompt, and the location of t
+he word "success"
   # perldoc -f exec:  The "exec" function executes a system command a
+nd never returns* 
   # If your OS (windoze?) does not have perl associated with .pl, thi
+s won't work, and even if it does, IIRC, using "exec" won't assign an
+ything to $var usefully, as "never returns" means everything after th
+e "exec(..." won't be executed. In effect, the "exec(..." is like "ex
+it;"

path\to\success>perl success.pl  # ie, this file
Success Ran Here
path\to\success>

=cut

open(FH, "success.pl");
@var=<FH>;
close(FH);
print $var;
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and if I guess *nix (as I do from the "-1" in OP's example 2):

ww@GIG:~/pl_test$ perl -e '@var=`success.pl`;print @var;\n;'
wheelerw@GIG:~/pl_test$

# nada (addressed in a prior reply)

ww@GIG:~/pl_test$ perl -e '@var=system("success.pl") or die "cant run"
+; print "@var \n";'
-1
ww@GIG:~/pl_test$

# system error; see reply above

ww@GIG:~/pl_test$ perl -e '@var=`success.pl`;print "@var\n";'

ww@GIG:~/pl_test$

# note blank line between prompts

ww@GIG:~/pl_test$ perl success.pl
Success Ran Here
ww@GIG:~/pl_test$

# newline added in 'print $var . "\n";' in *nix script

=cut
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Oh yes, this summary is quite late. Thank the alarm that sent us running to a "odor of gas in a structure" call... :-)