[larry@august-dev perl]$ curl --max-time 3 http://someweb.org 2>&1
curl: (6) name lookup timed out
[larry@august-dev perl]$ echo $?
6

##</code><code>##

 #!/usr/bin/perl
 use strict;
 use warnings;

 my $result = `curl --max-time 3 http://someweb.org 2>&1`;
 print "exit status: $?\n";
 print "result:\n", $result, "\n";

##</code><code>##

[larry@august-dev perl]$ ./foo.pl
exit status: 1536
result:
curl: (6) name lookup timed out