I am trying to execute a system command. The problem is that 1) there is a space in the directory name for the directory path, and 2) there is a pipe and a redirection.

I have read that the solution to the first problem is to pass the arguments as an array to system(). But when I try to pass the arguments as an array, I run into the second problem which is that the pipe and redirect do not work when they are passed to system() in the array, apparently because Perl forks a new process and does not have access to shell commands like pipe and redirect. What's the solution?

Script: 

my $backup_dir = "/home/username/Ubuntu One";

# dump the database and gzip it
my @mysqldump = ("mysqldump","--add-drop-table","-uroot","-ppassword",
+"mydatabase","|","gzip","-9c",">","$backup_dir/mydatabase.sql.gz");

system(@mysqldump);

[download]

Output: 

mysqldump: unknown option '-9'

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In reply to System command using array and pipe by civil777

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