G'day Cody Fendant,

Yes, I can make that silently fail too:

$ perl -e '$result = `foobar`'
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But I start getting feedback if I ask for it (i.e. with strict and warnings):

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e '$result = `foobar`'
Global symbol "$result" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
[download]

OK, let's fix up that one from strict:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e 'my $result = `foobar`'
Can't exec "foobar": No such file or directory at -e line 1.
[download]

Now this one from warnings which clears all errors:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e 'my $result = `ls`'
[download]

Given you're working in a CGI environment, you may find the fatalsToBrowser feature of CGI::Carp to be useful.