Greetings, and thank you for your reply.
After adding
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
I attempted to use your example, however, it failed to produce any output (to the browser).
Perl complained (rightfully) about
( Insecure $ENV{PATH} while running with -T switch )
So modified it as follows: 
use Modern::Perl;

my @l = system(`ls -1b`);
my $c = 0; # toggle for odd/even lines
for (@l){
    chomp;
    my $bg = $c ? "#eee" : "#ccc";
    say qq| <p style="font-family:mono;background:$bg">$_</p> |;
    $c = 0 if $c++ == 1;
}

[download]
Which produces one line with a grey background, that simply has a -1 in it.

I'm confused. Any further thoughts?
Thank you again for your response.



use perl::always;
my $perl_version( 5.12.4 );
print $perl_version;

In reply to Re^2: Handling the output of a system command -- how to best manage? by taint
in thread Handling the output of a system command -- how to best manage? by taint

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