This may mean I'm out of my mind, but I'm reading your question as reflecting a misunderstanding of what system is and does. My apologies if I'm wrong, but since most other answers above direct themselves to browser launching (the last line of the OP), allow me to vent on the observation and question in the first paragraph.

system is a native perl function; not limited to Windows... nor any other OS to which Perl has been ported. The OS specific elements related to system are the commands which you can call. For example,

C:\perl -e "system(dir);"

is specific to those OSen which provide a dir program or function. So that won't work for a nix'ish box (unless, of course, someone there are created an executable shell script named "dir") but the comparable *n*x command, ls, will work:

ww@GIG:~$ perl -e 'system(ls)';

Note that the quoting has changed; that's an OS-specific issue but system(command) is portable.

However, for more info (and important 'gotchas'), see 

perldoc -f system
system LIST
system PROGRAM LIST
        Does exactly the same thing as "exec LIST", except...

[download]

cf: `, qx//, exec

In reply to Re: Is there a system command in Linux by ww
in thread Is there a system command in Linux by mikasue

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