but that's what qx() or the backticks are for (personally, I like qx() more).

I understand what you're trying to say, but some beginners reading this might think backticks and qx() are two different things. Backticks and qx() are the same. qx() is an operator, `` is its shorthand. In fact, any non-whitespace character can be used as a delimiter (if it's alphanumeric, whitespace before the delimiter is required). qx() is not a function - my $dir = qx("ls -l") will probably not do what you want.

`ls -l`
qx(ls -l)
qx[ls -l]
qx`ls -l`
qx$ls -l$
qx!ls -l!
qx nls -ln
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More info: perlop

2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas'
Segmentation fault
2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$
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