from perldoc -f close: 
If the file handle came from a piped open "close" will addi-
tionally return false if one of the other system calls involved
fails or if the program exits with non-zero status.  (If the
only problem was that the program exited non-zero $! will be
set to 0.)  Closing a pipe also waits for the process executing
on the pipe to complete, in case you want to look at the output
of the pipe afterwards, and implicitly puts the exit status
value of that command into $?.

Prematurely closing the read end of a pipe (i.e. before the
process writing to it at the other end has closed it) will
result in a SIGPIPE being delivered to the writer.  If the
other end can't handle that, be sure to read all the data
before closing the pipe.
it's possible the app your opening is erroring out.

In reply to Re: Why might a close operation die? by Anonymous Monk
in thread Why might a close operation die? by talexb

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.