In order to pass a list of foobar file names to a shell command, I think the best approach does not involve perl at all (at least, not for unix/linux users, or people with proper unix-tool environments on their windows pcs):

find path -type f -print0 | xargs -0 some_command -opts
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For example, I just tried this, and it worked fine:

$ cd /tmp
$ mkdir test
$ cd test
$ echo '12$34 12|34 12!34 12&34' | xargs touch

# check that this really worked:
$ find . -type f
./12!34
./12$34
./12&34
./12|34

# now clean up the mess:
$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

# check that this really worked:
$ find . -type f
[download]

Apparently, using xargs on a shell command has the same effect as using the system() or exec() call in perl with arrays of args.