Re: Best method to capture return code from system calls?

[dave_the_m]

Note that system() returns a false value on success, so system(...) or ... is the wrong idiom. Your code was succeeding, then printing out a suprious error.

perlfunc demonstrates the most comprehensive checking code:

system(...);
if ($? == -1) {
    print "failed to execute: $!\n";
}
elsif ($? & 127) {
    printf "child died with signal %d, %s coredump\n",
    ($? & 127),  ($? & 128) ? 'with' : 'without';
}
else {
    printf "child exited with value %d\n", $? >> 8;
}

Note some further subtleties: since you are giving the command as a single string, it is executed by a shell, and you are actually checking the exit status of the shell rather than the command the shell is executing (although the shell normally returns the code of the last command it executed.)

But as has been pointed out, use File::Copy.

Dave.