die sets the exit code to a nonzero value, which you should find in $? in Perl and in ksh. Most likely you are calling perl with an intermediate shell, or maybe within a pipe construct:

myscript | grep errors
[download]

Pipe constructs tend to lose the intermediate exit codes.

If you can show the relevant part of the shell script where you call Perl and where you check for the error, maybe a solution will become apparent.

exit $rc;
[download]

returns a 0 error code even with a die statement

I'm pretty sure die is returning a nonzero value. That's how it is designed. Here is what I mean:

~# perl -e 'die "trying"'
trying at -e line 1
~# echo $?
255
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myscript.pl | do_something
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  ${BIN_DIR}/tapeloadListing.pl >> ${LOGS_DIR}/corps.${VERSION_DATE}.l
+og #2>&1
        if (( $? == 0 )); then
                echo "PERL script used to get the tapeload snapshot ra
+n successfully"
        else
                echo "PERL script used to get the tapeload snapshot fa
+iled, hence aborting the script as the files can't be downloaded" | m
+ailx -s "CORP V2 BUILD ERROR - ${VERSION_DATE}" ${MAIL_ADMIN}
                exit 1;
        fi
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The perl code

$fh  =  new FileHandle;
$fh -> open("< /export/home/$ADMIN/pwds/ftp_pass.txt") or die "Error o
+pening FTP password file, $!";
   $TAPELOAD_PWD = sprintf <$fh>;
$fh -> close;
print $TAPELOAD_PWD
chomp($TAPELOAD_PWD);
[download]

If I put in a totally incorrect user in the perl code, the KSH script still continues to run which I want to exit immediately.

add some code tags pretty please?

---

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg

Are you seeing the message:

Error opening FTP password file, ....

?

Where you say:

If I put in a totally incorrect user in the perl code, the KSH script still continues to run which I want to exit immediately.

implies the Perl script error is somewhere else.