Shell Programming and Scripting

I am not very good with perl but trying to force myself to start learning...
I have a script that calls three other scripts in variables. I want to use a if statement to check the exit status and not sure how to do it..


This is basically what I have, the individual scripts print either a Y or N.

Code:

        $COMMAND1=`command1`;
        $COMMAND2=`command2`;
        $COMMAND3=`command3`;
        if ($COMMAND1 eq "N" || ($COMMAND2 eq "N" || ($COMMAND3 eq "N" ) {
                print "something here";
        } else {
                print "something else";
        }

This works, but I don't like it and it should be done with the exit status. I was reading up on this site....
Perl Special Variables

"$! When used in a numeric context, holds the current value of errno. If used in a string context, will hold the error string associated with errno.
$@ Holds the syntax error message, if any, from the last eval() function call."

I am just not sure how to implement it.

By using backticks you are capturing the output of the shell command. This is not the same as its exit status.
For the exit status you need $? following your `STRING` (see perlop) or a system call (see perlfunc). Then the exit status is $?>>8 (read about $? in perlvar).
e.g.

Code:

$output=`command1`;
$status = $? >> 8;