If you want to capture the output, qx or backticks should do:

my $string="Hello";
my $output=qx("echo $string");
print $output;
__END__
Hello
[download]

BTW, is there a reason you are using a symbolic reference to access your variable?

Update: Never mind my blabbering. It's difficult to talk around the foot in my mouth :). That there is not a symbolic reference, they're disambiguating braces (thx chromatic).

CU
Robartes-