Your right! `cls` does indeed return an 'escape sequence' to perl. In this case, ascii 12 (form feed). I'm guessing that is a throw-over from DOS when clearing the screen was considered the glass-teletype equivalent of throwing a new page on a printer.
If I remember correctly, this is still how it is done on an OpenVMS system. The command to "clear the screen" is something like 
$ PRINT NL:

This has the effect of outputting the NULL device to the screen. Have no idea how that would look using Perl, never got the opportunity to use Perl on OpenVMS (if anyone has a spare Alpha workstation gathering dust though.... :-)

"Ex libris un peut de tout"

In reply to Re: Re: Re: The difference between [system] and `backticks` and [qx//] (on win32) by nimdokk
in thread The difference between [system] and `backticks` and [qx//] (on win32) by BrowserUk

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.