You may want to read this. That way I don't have to get too detailed. But in general:
When you run a command with backticks you should not need to redirect using the 2>&1. All output from the program will be redirected to your variable(AFAIK); when you want to capture output, use the backticks...not system(). Try removing the 2>&1 and see if you get the behavior you expected when using backticks.
HTH,
Chris

In reply to Re: Inconsistent system call from backticks vs system() by cbro
in thread Inconsistent system call from backticks vs system() by Tanalis

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