Perl backticks using bash

In Perl, the default shell to execute backticks is sh. I'd like to switch to use bash for its richer syntax. So far I found that the suggested solution is

`bash -c \"echo a b\"`

The apparent drawback is that the escaped double quotes, which means I will have difficulty to use double quotes in my bash args. For example, if I wanted to run commands requiring double quotes in bash

echo "a'b"

The above method will be very awkward.

Perl's system() call has a solution for this problem: to use ARRAY args,

system("bash", "-c", qq(echo "a'b"));

This keeps my original bash command unmodified, and almost always.

I'd like to use ARRAY args in backticks too. Is it possible?

Solution

Capture::Tiny is a very nice option: as the SYNOPSIS shows, you can do

use Capture::Tiny 'capture';
my ($output, $error_output, $exit_code) = capture {
    system(@whatever);
};

as well as using system inside capture_stdout if you want the simpler behavior of backticks.

Plus it's very general-purpose, working on Perl code (even Perl code that does weird stuff) as well as external programs, so it's a good thing to have in your toolbox.