A refreshing and totally unexpected tone of reply. I often see comments about more than one way..., but often there does seem to be a preferred way and/or a best practise way.

I have already read the strict/warnings node and commented in agreement with it (My first post actually). I do use warnings but must admit that I don't tend to use strict. I'm trying to get myself into the habbit of doing so for 'production' code.

In terms of testing the result of system would something like the below be appropriate?
if ($var = `system thingy`) || die "Failed to get return from call to system\n";

Thanks for the comments, encouragment and suggestions.