From qx

Similarly to system, if the string contains no shell metacharacters then it will executed directly.

Not sure what is included into "shell metacharacters" but a simple semicolon seems to suffice to force execution via the shell ...

lanx@ubuntu14-large:/tmp/sym$ perl -MCwd -E'say `pwd;` '
/tmp/sym

lanx@ubuntu14-large:/tmp/sym$ perl -MCwd -E'say `pwd` '
/tmp/dir

lanx@ubuntu14-large:/tmp/sym$
[download]

update

simplified code

You're 1 minute faster :-)

Please, you should really file a bugreport against Cwd.

Maybe they can't fix cwd() b/c of backwards compatibility but should at least clarify the documentation.

From my POV it's already silly to call two different routines getcwd() and cwd()

So you could suggest to add a new pwd() which always does something like `pwd -L`

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

after further investigation, it seems that `pwd` inside Perl doesn't default like pwd in bash ... which is unexpected

The answer is perhaps this in perlop for the qx//:

if the string contains no shell metacharacters then it will executed directly.

So although in general qx// uses the shell, if we say `pwd` then perl will execute /bin/pwd, which defaults to -P. If we say `bash -c pwd` then bash will execute its shell builtin version of pwd, which defaults to -L.

> it seems that `pwd` inside Perl doesn't default like pwd in bash

Note that qx// doesn't call bash but sh, which might be a different shell (/bin/dash on Ubuntu, for example).

map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

Noted, but that's not the cause of the difference here. `pwd` under dash still calls the shell builtin, which defaults to pwd -L.