I ported a perl script from perl5.10 on Ubuntu10 to perl5.8.8 on Ubuntu8.04.4, and `echo -e ...` stopped working.

Here's the output of a toy script on perl5.8.8 on Ubuntu8.04.4: 

-e hi there
hi there
/bin/echo

[download]
Here's the toy script: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
my $result = `echo -e 'hi there'`;
print "$result";
$result = `/bin/echo -e 'hi there'`;
print "$result";
$result = `which echo`;
print "$result";

[download]

I solved my current problem by replacing echo with /bin/echo, but what's going on here? (How come `which echo` doesn't tell me what's being used?) In general how do you control what linux command you're using in backticks?

In reply to which echo by dgillman

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