I was wondering how (from a perl script) I could run a DOS command and then redirect STDOUT and STDERR to a file. I read the perldoc and come to the exec() and system() functions, and it - the doc for perlfunc::system - says that I definitly should use qx//. And no surprise, as expected, it works perfectly (I *DO* love perl ! ).
But now I can't help wondering : why do we need the exec() and system() function then - why couldn't we always use ` ? is that only to get some kind of return code ? or is that so we can have "more than one way to" call a system function ? or is that a trap to catch every person asking as dumb questions as I do ?