my $cmd = "cd /home/foo/$row->{'dir'} && " .
  "./$row->{'name'}.pl >some.out 2>some.err &";

my $result = system ( $cmd );
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Potential shell injection vulnerability ($row->{'dir'} and $row->{'name'}). Consider using fork and exec manually.

Rough sketch:

1. my $pid=fork() // die
2. In the main program ($pid != 0), call waitpid($pid) at some point to wait for the end of the program you have forked before. Perhaps in a SiGCHLD handler.
3. In the child process ($pid == 0), do the following:
4. chdir("/home/foo/$row->{'dir'}") or die
5. open STDOUT,'>','some.out' or die
6. open STDERR,'>','some.err' or die
7. exec("$row->{'name'}.pl") or die

Related: The problem of "the" default shell

Alexander