Good idea steves++ , I suppose it depends on one's perl version and personal preference, but being able to call system with list syntax (bypassing the shell hence no jiggery-pokery with escaping things) is IMHO so groovy it hurts doing it the old way!. I'd make a small modification to your subroutine.

sub run_command
  {
      # invoke system(@list) if more than one arg passed.
      ($#_) ? system(@_) : system($_[0]);
      
      if ($?)
      {
          my $rc = $? >> 8;
          die "Failed to run '$command': exit code $rc\n";
      }
  }
  # Easy arg passing with a list;
  run_command('blah' , '-v' , '-q');
  # Pass as scalar for shell interpretation of metachars
  run_command('tar cvf /dev/null /tmp/*.sock');
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warning - the args to run_command are untested but no harmful

I can't believe it's not psellchecked