But you asked to make it more efficient. And calling other programs is very Perlish. Larry didn't call Perl a "glue language" without having a reason. Code reuse is a good thing, and code reuse doesn't stop at Perl code. IMO, a programmer who opts for a Perl solution for the sake of having a Perl solution is still at the newbie stage. system is a very important tool in the Perl toolkit.
I fully agree with you, ive used system calls to run other apps and it works great when needed. However, as I said this was purely for brushing up my knowledge base, and to see what kind of steps I can use to futher that knowlege.