Put $! in your exit error message and you will almost certainly be told exactly what your problem is. In fact I would take a tip from perlstyle and write it like this: 
my $cmd = "perl /path/to/indexer.pl";
system($cmd) or die "Cannot run '$cmd': $!";

[download]
(Unless of course I took a tip from my understanding of Perl and arranged to do or require the script. Actually I would probably put it's functions into a module then use that.)

UPDATE
Oops.

The code snippet as written is useless. See comments below and the fact that the return for success is 0.

But the reference to perlstyle is good, as well the advice on not doing system commands is likewise.

In reply to Re (tilly) 1: Problem calling one script from another by tilly
in thread Problem calling one script from another by sz

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