Thankyou all. I feel like a dunce, but a more educated dunce!

I can't believe I've not hit this before. Looking over my scripts though I can see why. I always used to issue
$result = `command`; then evaluate $result to see if it had worked. Also I've never issued a command before that returns nothing when successful (NT is normally fairly verbose). Here I've changed my coding style together and have tripped over my own shoelaces.

I will try to look system documentation again. I'm not too hot on Perls in built variables. I've got the hang of $_ but not a lot else, what should I feed into perldoc to gain enlightenment?