The first example seems a bit long-winded already in bash and could be improved to: 
ls /usr/bin | xargs whatis

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It didn't look like a worthwhile goal anyway to just use perl -e to system() back to the shell. I'd try something that can be done without the system() call, e.g. counting the number of lines in each file.
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^M Free your mind!

In reply to Re: system call how-to by Moron
in thread system call how-to by elsiddik

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