usage of AWK command under perl script

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

i have two files as shown below
t1.txt:

argument1
argu2
argu37

t2.txt:

22
33
44

i want o/p as

argument1             22
argu2                     33
argu37                   44

i am trying to merge two file under perl script using following

system("paste t1.txt t2.txt | awk '{ printf "%-10s %s\n", $1, $2 }'>ff.txt");

i am getting error as
Substitution pattern not terminated at rr.pl line .....

i am able to get o/p when i run the command under shell script as below

paste t1.txt t2.txt | awk '{ printf "%-10s %s\n", $1, $2 }'>ff.txt

but i want perl script for it.
can anyone help me out.

2

I don't use perl, and it seems strange to make a system call to awk when perl is so powerful, ... but,

"What happens when you have \"two levels\" of quotes in perl?"

edit-- in case the hint wasn't helpful enough, i do believe perl has a special qq() function too... such that maybe:

system( qq(paste t1.txt t2.txt | awk '{ printf "%-10s %s\n", $1, $2 }'>ff.txt) );

would do better?

3

i am getting error as below:
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at rr.pl line

4