Fellow Monk,
I'm not sure in this context why you are using package in this case at all. Package is normally used when you are creating a module. Given this example of what I'm talking about:

package myFoo;

sub new {
     return {},"myFoo";
}

sub stuff {
}

1;
[download]

and in another file:

use myFoo;

my $f = new myFoo();

$f->stuff;
[download]

Of course the example I give is a total NOOP but that's besides the point.

You formed electrons and spake thusly:

I would just like to run them and return to the main script with some indication of failure or success.

That's a rather open ended statement. Without understanding the underlying mechanics of your system invocation with respect to the behavior of the program you are executing with it in my opinion all I can do is give you a speculative answer.

In my own experience if I am spawning a child process and I want to know if the process is still running I may use one of the following schemes:

• If there is a socket to the child process I can open and jiggle, write a function to do that.
• If the child process is running locally check the process table and make sure it is still consuming resources
• Again if the process if running locally check any resultant log files for signs of life
• If it is running remotely use a variation of the above.

Some research you could do is look at Nagios plugin sources and see how they determine if a process is up or not.

Another observation is that since you are using system are you really kicking off multiple instances of the code you are trying to execute? I've never personally executed Wine from within a Perl script but I'd think that until it finishes execution it is going to block further execution of your script. A way around that is to use fork() and execute your system command within the child process. That way you can check to see if the child PID is still active and if you capture SIGCHLD you can be notified in the parent process when the child dies.

Hope this helps...

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