3.2.167 system

system 

LIST

This function executes any program on the system for you. It does exactly the same thing as exec LIST except that it does a fork first, and then, after the exec, it waits for the exec'd program to complete. That is (in non-UNIX terms), it runs the program for you, and returns when it's done, unlike exec , which never returns (if it succeeds). Note that argument processing varies depending on the number of arguments, as described for exec . The return value is the exit status of the program as returned by the wait (2) call. To get the actual exit value, divide by 256. (The lower 8 bits are set if the process died from a signal.) See exec .

Because system and backticks block SIGINT and SIGQUIT , killing the program they're running with one of those signals doesn't actually interrupt your program.

@args = ("command", "arg1", "arg2"); system(@args) == 0       or die "system @args failed: $?"

Here's a more elaborate example of analyzing the return value from system on a UNIX system to check for all possibilities, including for signals and coredumps.

$rc = 0xffff & system @args; printf "system(%s) returned %#04x: ", "@args", $rc; if ($rc == 0) {     print "ran with normal exit\n"; }  elsif ($rc == 0xff00) {     print "command failed: $!\n"; }  elsif (($rc & 0xff) == 0) {     $rc >>= 8;     print "ran with non-zero exit status $rc\n"; }  else {     print "ran with ";     if ($rc &   0x80) {         $rc &= ~0x80;         print "coredump from ";     }      print "signal $rc\n" }  $ok = ($rc == 0);