An answer how to use many arg open has already been given, and you probably should use that.

For future reference, if I do have to pass something to the shell, but I need to be sure it will not blow up due to characters special to the shell, I do:

my $thingy = "....";
$thingy =~ s/'/'"'"'/g;
my $cmd = "womble womble '$thingy' wibble wibble";
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