in reply to system commands with spaces

Hi :) The cure is in the manual for exec 
    @args = ( "echo surprise" );

    exec @args;               # subject to shell escapes
                                # if @args == 1
    exec { $args[0] } @args;  # safe even with one-arg list

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system { $args[0] } @args; is not subject to shell escapes. Cheers

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Re: Re: system commands with spaces
by dpuu (Chaplain) on Apr 09, 2004 at 16:46 UTC
    Yes, that's probably a better implementation than quoting $_[0]. But the idea of wrapping the system() call to make it DWIM still seems like a win. The concept of the system interface is that you can call it with either a list or a scalar and it will do the right thing. Having to use a different syntax for the special case of a 1-item list (with spaces) doesn't feel right -- especially when its a simple hack to have perl figure this out for me.
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In Section Cool Uses for Perl