Writing the algorithm/requirement as an HTML ordered list would help readability enormously.

Having said that, your use of startup script is somewhat ambiguous - do you mean a script to start an application or a script thats runs when the system starts ?

I suspect the answer you seek lies in the use of backticks ... 

.
.
my $out = `shell_script`;
if (! $out || $out !~ /\d/) {
    log_error;
    $out = `alternate_method`;
}

`bind_cpu $out`;
.
.

[download]
Have a look at perlfunc, perlop

A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))

In reply to Re: executing a shell script from perl by Bloodnok
in thread executing a shell script from perl by usrlocal

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