So, the moral of the story: always use the list form of system, and avoid backticks if you can. If you have to do strange things w/ redirecting output, look at IPC::Open2 and IPC::Open3 which can also take list inputs.

One trap for the unwary: system(@cmd); isn't completely reliable either, since if @cmd only has one element, it may still invoke the shell, the solution is to write system { $cmd[0] } @cmd; (documented in exec). AFAIK such a syntax is not available for IPC::Open3 and piped opens, so there it is important to make sure that @cmd always has at least two elements.

In reply to Re: The importance of avoiding the shell by Anonymous Monk
in thread The importance of avoiding the shell by jhourcle

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