The blank line is because the command returns one new line, and I am explicitly printing a newline in perl print command. I was pretty sure I had tried just about every combination of params just in case there was something goofy, but I double checked and tried it both with interactive 1 and not suppressing the shell, and interactive off and supressing the shell to no avail. I did find some insight on how to sort of run a trace on the Stratus command, and it appears to actually be running running multiple commands behind the scenes. I am pretty sure that is the issue.
Thanks for your feedback!
B