shell_exec

ok, hopefully someone have have a theory on this
cause I'm not getting anywhere

I've written a perl script
which I'm trying to get to run from a php page
I've tried using both shell_exec and the popen approach
both have failed
now, the perl script I wrote works perfectly when ran from the shell prompt
which leads me to believe the perl is fine
and the shell_exec seems to run fine when sending ls -l or head to it
which leads me to believe the shell_exec is working fine
but together, it's just not doing anything
any ideas?

here is what the most recent version looked like inside the php page...



very simple
but not working

as mentioned, changing the "/usr/bin/perl" to "head" does return the first lines of the perl
and running "/usr/bin/perl /usr/local/www/data/image_page.pl" from the shell, DOES run the script perfectly

thanks