And lo, the aspirant was directed to the holy documentation of the camel, in the perldoc of perlipc, wherein it is written:

Be careful to check both the open() and the close() return values. If 
+you're writing to a pipe, you should also trap SIGPIPE. Otherwise, th
+ink of what happens when you start up a pipe to a command that doesn'
+t exist: the open() will in all likelihood succeed (it only reflects 
+the fork()'s success), but then your output will fail--spectacularly.
+ Perl can't know whether the command worked because your command is a
+ctually running in a separate process whose exec() might have failed.
[download]

and also therein is described the fix, but that is left for the aspirant who now knows where to look to find the wisdom he seeks.

(HTH!)