in reply to I've never seen this syntax before

If the intent is to return false if $cmd executes correctly, the code you've shown is badly, badly broken. print is going to return 1 regardless of whether `$cmd 2>&1`; executes correctly, and regardless of whatever ends up in $txt.

Look downstream of the return, and see if any callers are actually using the return value, and whether they think it has anything to do with the command executing properly. You may get to replace Execute with something that works. Fortunately, that's an easy fix. I'll leave it as a learning exercise.