Try to avoid qx, ``, single argument system, single argument exec, and single argument pipe open. All of these share a single problem: Except for very simple cases (alphanumeric-only commands), perl invokes "the" default shell, and things will go wrong from there quite fast. Simply because there is no single definition for "the" default shell. Default shells differ wildly in behaviour with varying versions of the operating system, and even more across operating systems. See Re^2: how do i run a shell command without waiting for the output for more details and a collection of background links.

Alexander