Perl pipe usage to redirect sys$output

[Sam Ravindhran]

The following lines of code taken from Unix fails for
me on VMS:
----------------------
    if(open(EXEC_WRITER, "|$executable > $filename"))
    {
      my $cmd;
      foreach $cmd (@commands)
      {
        print  EXEC_WRITER "$cmd\n";
      }
      close EXEC_WRITER ;
      {
        if(open (OUT_PUT, "$filename"))
        {
          my @output_content = <OUT_PUT>;
          $output_string = "@output_content";
          close OUT_PUT;
        }
      }
----------

I get an error indicating that the ">" character is
invalid in a command line. It looks like there is an
attempt to redirect output to a file ($filename) the
syntax of which fails. Is there a way to recode this
to make it work on VMS or is it possible that I am
missing some patch/fix for this problem? I am using
Perl distribution at version  5.6.

Appreciate any pointers.

Thanks,
Sam