$ cat shabba for my $key ( grep /perl/i , keys %ENV ){ print qq{ $key $ENV{$key}\n}; } $ perl shabba PERL_MB_OPT --config installhtmldir= --binhtml= $ perl -e " $ENV{PERL_SHABBA}=666; system $^X, q{shabba}; " PERL_SHABBA 666 PERL_MB_OPT --config installhtmldir= --binhtml= --config installhtmldir= --binhtml= $ perl shabba PERL_MB_OPT --config installhtmldir= --binhtml=