in reply to Getting back control..to main script
EDIT: I need to read my fellow monk's post more closely. The same suggestion was already posted by jethro. Sorry
Ok I guess I'll throw my 2 cents in here. Reading through all the posts, there's no mention of what os you're running. Just in case you're in a *nix system, you'll want to use system("command&"). The system command unlike exec will return control to the perl program once the external command leaves the foreground which the & at the end of the command will do. Thus control is returned immediately after issuing the command.
On Windows, I'd go with the fork+system/exec suggestions the rest of my fellow monks have suggested.