When you call exec a new process is forked and the parent quits, whereas when you call system the parent waits for the system call to complete. Using backticks `` or the qx is similar to a system call but the output is returned to the caller. eg.
$ perl -Mstrict -e 'my @out =qx{ls $ENV{HOME}/tmp};
chomp @out;
print join (", " , @out), "\n";'
a.out, test.c, test.dat, test.pl
Could you show us how you call the command within your Perl script?
print "Good ",qw(night morning afternoon evening)[(localtime)[2]/6]," fellow monks."
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