You want to quote the string properly for your shell.

Perhaps. Or better, avoid the shell and use the list form of system or exec, as documented in perlipc. (Unless, of course, we're talking about Windows, where the quoting rules can differ from program to program because programs are invoked with a single argument string instead of a list of arguments.)

Most likely String::ShellQuote will do what you want.

No. It did not keep its promise in 2005, and despite a minor update, it still does not in 2014. It still lacks support for any shell except that one unnamed and unversioned shell the author tested against. It still lacks proper tests, and it still does not support Windows, DOS, OS/2, and any other OS that does not exclusively use a bourne shell.

Alexander