Translated:

I'm a new user to perl and have recently inherited the role of administrator with the Rational Clearcase confguration control tool (on NT). I'm trying to write simple scripts to import deliveries of software and I am having problems trying to extract error messages after running cleartool commands. The following is an example.

open (TEMP,"cleartool checkout -nc $element_pathname |"),||die "Failed
+ to run cleartool";
while (<\TEMP>){
               print "The message is - $_";
               )
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If the element is not checked out, everythings groovy, I can play with the $_ variable, however if the element is already checked out, the error message is sent to the display, but this appears to be regardless of the print $_ statement, it has not been assigned anything, it doesn't even enter the while loop. This is probabily a simple thing but I'm stumped I need to be able to manipulate this error message. Please Help.
P.S. Any other info would be much appreciated

Quick notes: I hope the comma before the "|| die" and the backslash before the TEMP are typos.