As I just mentioned in this post, how about IPC::Run3?

From its Pod:

compared to system(), qx'', open "...|", open "|...":

    + redirects more than one file descriptor
    + returns TRUE on success, FALSE on failure
    + throws an error if problems occur in the parent process (or the 
+pre-exec child)
    + allows a very perlish interface to Perl data structures and subr
+outines
    + allows 1 word invocations to avoid the shell easily:

         run3 ["foo"];  # does not invoke shell

    - does not return the exit code, leaves it in $?
[download]

So you could use it like this:

eval { run3 $program } or die "Errors running $program";
[download]

Its docs leave a bit to be desired, but the current maintainer might be willing to take some doc patches...