Read perldoc IPC::Open3. The 'a' is STDIN to your program,
the 'b' is STDOUT, and 'c' is STDERR, (which will be combined into STDOUT if 0 ). So to send a command to $cmd, just " print a 'my_message_to_send' ", where 'a' is the filehandle. That's why it's called IPC Open3 , it opens 3 filehandles to your program.
I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
flash japh