I had a bunch of thoughts about this but rather than write a longwinded post, I thought a little code would demonstrate better. (Untested.) 
package Shell::DWIM;
use warnings;
use strict;

our ($RUN_ERROR, $OS_ERR);
*OS_ERROR = $^O =~ m{VMS|MSWin|OS/2} ? \$^E : \$!;

sub sysdwim {
    local $@;
    my $retval = eval { system @_ };
    
    if ($retval == 0) {
        $RUN_ERROR = undef;
        return 1;
    }

    $RUN_ERROR =
        $? > 0   ? $?        :  # non-zero exit code from program
        $? == -1 ? "$OS_ERR" :  # couldn't launch program for some rea
+son
        $@       ? $@        :  # eval failed
                 "system() failed with unknown error";

    return;
}

sub import {
    my $pkg = (caller)[0];
    *{$pkg . ($_[0] eq 'override' ? "::system" : "::sysdwim")} = \&sys
+dwim;
    *{$pkg . "::RUN_ERROR"} = \$RUN_ERROR;
}

1;

[download]
I'll gladly elaborate if any of my intentions are unclear. This isn't optimal either; it'd be perfect for my taste if it was possible to do a lexical no Shell:DWIM; as well, but I haven't gotten so far in Perl yet.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re: RFC: Shell::DWIM by Aristotle
in thread RFC: Shell::DWIM by erikharrison

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.