I got similar results: The shell throws an error, but it never makes it to Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl
use 5.018;
use strict;
use warnings;

open (my $ARTICLE, "-|", "caesar") or die "Can't start caesar: $!\n$^E
+";

my $read = <$ARTICLE>;
say "[$read]";
[download]

perl pipe.pl
'caesar' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Use of uninitialized value $read in concatenation (.) or string at pip
+e.pl line 9.
[]
[download]