what reasons do you have to not call the test.pl script from within the current perl process (the one that is executing test_main.pl) ? Must it be that separate from your main script?

You can always load and execute a script once via the do FILE mechanism. For example, having the main script

#!/usr/bin/perl
# script test_main.pl

use test1;

my $var = test1::abc('test.pl');
print $var,"\n";
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and the module file

# file test1.pm
package test1;

sub abc {
    my $file = shift;
    my $variable = do $file;
}
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which calls from sub this file:

# file test.pl
my $time = scalar localtime time;
$time;
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then the script test_main.pl loads test1.pm and calls the subroutine abc with a filename as argument. The subroutine abc form test1.pm loads and executes the file. The last expression evaluated in that file is $time, so that value is returned by do and stuffed into the private $variable - which is passed to to the mainscript (it's the last expression of the subroutine), stored there into $var and printed out.

See do. See also require, use, system, and read about the "quote and execute" qx operator in perlop.

Calling perl from a perl script via system is almost always a bad idea.

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}