Instead of system, you might want to use qx// or the `backticks`. The purpose of those constructs is to capture output of your shell commands.

Have a look at perlop for details.

Example:

perl -e "print reverse qx/dir/;"
[download]

...(for Windows) or ....

perl -e 'print reverse qx/ls -l/;'
[download]

...(for unix/linux).