I read that multiple times :-) (I wouldn't dare post otherwise). I guess my problem is that I don't understand what it says.

What are "shell metacharacters"? All those variables are defined in the Perl script, so they should be resolved in the script. Are \" shell metacharacters? And what about > and <? They occur in Perl when you open a pipe, but this is sort of different...or maybe not...?

Also, what difference does it make whether Perl starts qrsh with that whole list of arguments, or whether the shell does? And when Perl starts qrsh, what about > and <, *if* they are "shell metacharacters"? How do they get interpreted?

In the one-argument case, I can print the whole string to see what it is resolved to. But what about the multiple argument case? How do I know what that really works out to (so that I can write the same thing in when I call capture_exec)?