Fellow monks, I have come across a problem that I cannot explain. In the following code I am using the system command to read in two points from a database. For some reason, both values, $a and $b are being printed out. If I comment out the last line, just one value is printed to the screen. But with the last line in, it prints out the value of $a and $b. How can $b be printed out when it has not even read the point yet? I'm using version 5.6. Any ideas? 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use diagnostics;

my $a = system "read_apt db_1";
print $a;

my $b = system "read_apt db2";

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In reply to Possible bug in Perl? by Lhamo_rin

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