=over

=item system LIST

=item system PROGRAM LIST

Does exactly the same thing as "C<exec LIST>" except that a fork is done
first, and the parent process waits for the child process to complete.
Note that argument processing varies depending on the number of
arguments.  If there is more than one argument in LIST, or if LIST is
an array with more than one value, starts the program given by the
first element of the list with arguments given by the rest of the list.
If there is only one scalar argument, the argument is
checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any, the entire
argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing (this is
C</bin/sh -c> on Unix platforms, but varies on other platforms).  If
there are no shell metacharacters in the argument, it is split into
words and passed directly to C<execvp()>, which is more efficient.

The return value is the exit status of the program as
returned by the C<wait()> call.  To get the actual exit value divide by
256.  See also L</exec>.  This is I<NOT> what you want to use to capture
the output from a command, for that you should use merely backticks or
C<qx//>, as described in L<perlop/"`STRING`">.

Like C<exec()>, C<system()> allows you to lie to a program about its name if
you use the "C<system PROGRAM LIST>" syntax.  Again, see L</exec>.

Because C<system()> and backticks block C<SIGINT> and C<SIGQUIT>, killing the
program they're running doesn't actually interrupt your program.

    @args = ("command", "arg1", "arg2");
    system(@args) == 0
	 or die "system @args failed: $?"

You can check all the failure possibilities by inspecting
C<$?> like this:

    $exit_value  = $? >> 8;
    $signal_num  = $? & 127;
    $dumped_core = $? & 128;

When the arguments get executed via the system shell, results
and return codes will be subject to its quirks and capabilities.
See L<perlop/"`STRING`"> and L</exec> for details.

=back