The answer to this will depend on how your Perl script needs to interact with the external program. Here's a non-exhaustive list of possibilities:

• You want to wait for the program to finish and check its exit status: system may be best.
• You want the output from the program: qx{...} (or `...`) may be the best choice — see perlop: Quote-Like Operators for details.
• You want control over how (one of) input or output is written to or read from the program: perhaps choose open with a mode of '|-' or '-|' — see perlipc: Using open() for IPC for more details.
• See perlipc for more complex scenarios, such as bidirectional and client/server communication.
• There are also many modules that may do exactly what you want, e.g. the built-in IPC::* modules.

If you provide a clearer picture of your requirements, we can provide a better answer.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.