use strict;
use warnings;

# Capture the output of the "dir" command:

my $dir=`dir compile.pl`;
print $dir;

# Now capture the output of this:
my $result=`perl -c compile.pl`;

# Check if there is anything in $result
print "Length is :".length($result);

exit 0;

# This results in the following output :

__DATA__
29-06-2012  11:44               412 compile.pl
.
.
compile.pl syntax OK
Length is :0