in reply to Backtick and problem with setting path within it

We covered this in your last post.
home/myname/MyPerl/src/a_program.out
is not the same as
/home/myname/MyPerl/src/a_program.out
You want the latter.

src/a_program.out
would also work since your work directory is
/home/myname/MyPerl
Relative paths (paths that don't start with "/" or "~") are relative to the working directory, which can be different than the directory in which the script resides.