How to capture exit code of a perl script which is called from a shell script

I have this sample perl code, where $a $b $c values can be changed and has exit code $ex. I call this from another shell script, which is affected by abc.pl’s exit code. How do I capture just the exit code of this perl.

my $a=0; my $b=0; my $c=0;
my $sum = $a+$b+$c; $ex = 0;
if($sum == 0){
    print "success"; print " $ex \n";
}else{
    $ec=1 ; print "Not success"; print " $ex \n";
}
exit $ex;

Sample shell script.

echo start
set ecd = `abc.pl`
echo $ecd
echo stop

Here $ecd prints whatever is the output of abc.pl, but not just the exit code.

>Solution :

$? contains the exit code of the last executed command.

set ecd = `abc.pl`
set status = $?