Use system instead of backticks:

my $output = system($exec);
print ($output >> 8), "\n";

[download]

Update: If you need to capture the output as well as the return value of the external application, use Capture::Tiny. See the recent thread Problem logging STDOUT in perl.

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

In reply to Re: How to catch the return code of another program? by Athanasius
in thread How to catch the return code of another program? by hary536

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