< Tuna scrathces his head>

In my program, I execute a subroutine N times. This subroutine calls external programs, which return either 0 or 1. I need to keep track of how many times "external.pl" fails. If it fails > 2x, I will enter another sequence of subroutines.

Here's an example:

## In main, I initialize,  

my $failedActivation = 0;


sub activateFirstCluster
  {
   
my $offlineStatus;

 if ($failedActivations eq  3 ) 
{

$offlineStatus = &executeTaskSequence($clusterHost, @offLineSequence);

}
else
  {

  $command = "/bin/ls";
                        
  ($error = &runSystemCommand($command)) && $failedActivations++;

print "failed $failedActivations times\n";

  return $success;
}

  }
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If I inject an obvious error into the subroutine, such as rename $command to "/bin/lssss", my print statement still prints 0. Any ideas?