I got the code below to run on perl 5.8.4

$ENV{'PATH'} =  '';
$ENV{'BASH_ENV'} =  '';
my $server = '-a';
my @cupscmd=("/bin/ls ", "-l", $server, "-r");
my $cups_cmd=qx/@cupscmd/;
print $cups_cmd, "\n";
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I don't have cups, but the command run should not matter.