I would use your first method, but if you must do it in one statement you can try 
use strict;
use warnings;

my $result = qx[${\ ( 
               'ls -l ' .
               '/etc'  .
               '/passwd' ) 
             }];
print $result . "\n";

[download]
output: 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1867 Apr 28 15:00 /etc/passwd

[download]
Update see also Perl Idioms Explained - ${\$obj->method} and @{[sort @list]}

In reply to Re: Line breaks within backticks by Arunbear
in thread Line breaks within backticks by BjornStenborg

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