You are correct in your statements about system, qx, and the backtick (`) operator. However, there is little syntactical difference between your example with qx'', and qx{}. Both are correct and will return the result of execution. The previous poster, didn't really mention system at all. (Just observing)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
 
@username = qw(nobody anybody);
 
@foo = qx{ echo $username[0] };
chomp($foo[0]);
print "'$foo[0]'\n";
 
@foo = qx{ echo \$username[0] };
chomp($foo[0]);
print "'$foo[0]'\n";
 
@foo = qx' echo $username[0] ';
chomp($foo[0]);
print "'$foo[0]'\n";

# prints out
#'nobody'
#'[0]'
#'[0]'
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my @a=qw(random brilliant braindead); print $a[rand(@a)];