The exec fucntion does exit perl and executes the external command, never comming back to perl. If you need to exectute a command, evalute its return value, and then go back to perl then you probably want to use the system function:

see "perldoc -f system" for the details

In reply to Re: Running external process WHILE exiting/returning by Missing Words
in thread Running external process WHILE exiting/returning by seaver

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