invoke shell script from Perl

What does check_Extracts.ksh do?
when would it return a non zero status?

instanceName=$1
source=$2
clientInstance=$3

portNum=4${instanceName##[a-z]*[a-z]}

results=`isql -Sservername -Uuser -Ppassword <<EOF
set nocount on
go
select ipaddress from client_info where instancename = "$instanceName"
go
EOF`

ip=`echo "$results" | tail +3`

echo "IP:$ip\n";
echo "$portNum\n";
ssh $ip "grep ":$portNum" *> "$clientInstance$source"_xml_extract.out

THis is the check_Extracts script. WHen I invoke this script with the directly supplying the inputs it works fine but when I invoke the shell script thru Perl with the input @array=(client638    qsapp01     cl638       ATG    source) it throws the above error

What is the status in $? when you invoke this script with the directly supplying the inputs ?
Does anything print when you invoke it from Perl?
is "$clientInstance$source"_xml_extract.out creates when you invoke it from perl?

The $? is 256 when I invoke from Perl.
But when I execute directly the $clientInstance$source"_xml_extract.out is created with the data.

But when I try from Perl even the file is not created.

How do I check $? when I direclty execute the shell script.

when I printed the $? in my shell script it is printing 1. That means is my script failiing but t does generate the file with data. Please advise.

If the script does what you want despite returning a non-zero status, then perhaps you want to ignore the status.
Unless the status signifies something you don't wantin which case you may want to adjust  the ksh script
It looks like the last command was a grep, which would return status 1 if the line is not found
Is that a problem?

It is actually create the file even though the perl script dies when I invoke the shell script thru Perl. I don't understand what is wrong.