I'm not sure if I understood the question, but you can use eval in the script to catch the exceptions thrown from the module.

The obvious answer is to remove the croak (or perhaps change it to a carp/warn).

You can run a command in backticks to trap both the output and the status code it returns. So you should be able to do something like:

my $response=`useradd fred ....`;
#check the status code (0 = success)
if ($? >>8) {
  # we could not add the user
}
[download]

Shouldn't it be something like this?

Update:

OK, eval...

my $result;
eval {
    $result = qx($command);
};

if ( $? >> 8 != 0 ) {
    if ($@) {
        die $@;
    }
    else {
        die qq(Something really weird happened!);
    }
}
# do stuff with $result...
[download]

Regards, Karl

«The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

Thanks, you're right about the other issues, I was simply in a hurry to outline a way forward_{at least that's the excuse I'm using :-)}

Question: Why 'eval' this instead of just running this in backticks? I understand the command can fail, but in those cases it simply returns an error code.

If you spot any bugs in my solutions, it's because I've deliberately left them in as an exercise for the reader! :-)

Shouldn't it be:

my $result = qx($command);

if ( $? >> 8 != 0 ) {
    if ($@) {
        die $@;
    }
    else {
        die qq(Something really weird happened!);
    }
}
[download]

Regards, Karl

«The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»