The basic facilities for running an external program from within any perl script are system and backticks. To execute an external program from within a perl script, use system "program name" (if you don't need to gather the output), and backticks `program name` if you do. If you need to get fancy and run these external programs in the background, read up on fork and exec.

But let me warn you: unless you want to open up *very serious* security holes on your site, do NOT do any of this until you have read perldoc perlsec online version and *understand* it. To do otherwise is to virtually request trouble.