in reply to blank string returned from piped command

that did something...modified per samtregar and Ieronim's suggestions: 
# run command through a pipe
open(WEBOS,"$com|") or warn("cant open pipe to command: $!");
$com = join('', <WEBOS>);
close(WEBOS) or warn("cant close pipe to command: $! $?");

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 and it seems to be throwing an error on the close(), though it doesnt say why. scratch that last comment, $? is returning the value 11

UPDATE: the C program i'm calling seems to be failing when do_auth calls it from within a module. when do_auth calls it from within a pl script, however, it works fine. this gives me the impression that the permissions are varying when I call a sub in the instance script from when i call a sub in a module used in said instance script. in the meantime, i'm just going to drop the CGI::Application framework right now and rewrite it all as one big script.

thanks for the help, everyone! i appreciate it, as always!

__________
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In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom