what's the problem with a system call

Question

whats the disadvantage when calling a system command from Perl?i.e, system call to "rsync" rather than using the File::Rsync module. is it hard to control the signals between the caller process and the called system command?

Answer 1

Well, usually using a module you have access to several things in a
Perl way, like for instance to the arguments to pass to the command as
an hash or an array. instead of a string. Moreover, the perl module
could have some workarounds to provide you better portability.

Answer 2

The only real disadvantage is portability, perhaps speed (e.g. PerlIO::gzip is faster than calling gzip itself, and if youre shelling out multiple times, itll generally be slower than simply using a module).
Additionally, if youre passing user-provided arguments to the outside command and arent doing things "properly", that is, you arent using IPC::Cmd, IPC::Run, or multi-arg open, you have a potential security hole in your program.

But if what youre doing doesnt gain any advantages from increased portability or security, theres nothing wrong with calling a system command.