open has a piping syntax that you can use to pipe data to or from a program. You can get the exit value from $? (see perlvar). 
open P,"command |" or die "error running command $!";
my @data=<p>;
close P;
my $exit_value=$? >> 8;

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In reply to Re: How do I get both the return value and text? backticks vs. system() by lhoward
in thread How do I get both the return value and text? backticks vs. system() by flymolo

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