It is usually a recommended good practice not to shell out to the system when you can avoid it. And there are many good reasons for that, security and portability just to name a few. I think it should be avoided especially when the commands you want to run exists in core Perl.

See, for example, Calling External Commands More Safely and The problem of "the" default shell.

In reply to Re^4: How do I use grep in a script by Laurent_R
in thread How do I use grep in a script by Flintlock

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