IPC::System::Simple provides capture and capturex which are single- and multi-arg versions of qw respectively.

use IPC::System::Simple qw( capture capturex );

my $foo = capture("shell command");
my $foo = capturex("program");
my $foo = capturex("program", @args);
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Conveniently, they even do the error checking for you.

By the way, IPC::System::Simple can also add error checking to system.

use IPC::System::Simple qw( system systemx );

system("shell command");
systemx("program");
systemx("program", @args);
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Thank you a lot. It really seems to be what I was looking for !!!!

Remove the single quotes from around $LANG in your second form or replace them with double quotes.

qx is another form for backticks, which in perl will capture the return from the system call.

my $return = qx{echo $LANG};
say $return;
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thanks for your answer;

but, if replace single quotes by doubles quotes with qx, $LANG will be resolved as a Perl variable, not as a shell environment variable

This little code will show it clearly:

cat essaiQX.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl 

my $LANG = "script internal";

system('echo $LANG');
system('echo','$LANG');

my @out = qx "echo $LANG";
chomp(@out);
print "out=@out\n";

my @out = qx' echo $LANG ';
chomp(@out);
print "out=@out\n";
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it's output is :

./essaiQX.pl
fr_FR.UTF-8
$LANG
out=script internal
out=fr_FR.UTF-8
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In fact i'd like to pass parameters to the command (the "echo" program in this little example), with possibly $, *, and such characters which the shell interpretes. while avoiding a large collection of antislashes. May be, it's not possible with qx and I must use system(). That's what I'd like to know</p

If you want the environments LANG variable, use $ENV{LANG}.