BRILLIANT!

now i call waitpid(-1,0), and the value of $? is the return value from the open! this will make my programming life MUCH easier!

thank you tye.

in case this helps anyone else, the code that's changed is:

eval { 
    $pid = open3("<&STDIN", \*OUTPUT, \*OUTERR, 'perl return.pl') ;
    $val = waitpid(-1,0); # <--- added this line
};

...

print "---pid$n";     print $pid . $n;  # <--- prints pid
print "---val$n";     print $val . $n;  # <--- prints pid
print "---\$?$n";     print $? >>8, $n; # <--- prints exit val
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~Particle