Yes, this orders the shell to *replace itself* ("exec ...") with another one ... which might do more changes than you want, such as losing environment-variable settings that are not made by .bashrc. Another common way to do it is to simply put the command which invokes the Perl script into a "two-liner" command-file which ends with a cd command. The Perl script is run, then the current-directory is changed, then the command-file ends, and you're still in the same shell instance.