Should I escape shell arguments in Perl?

Question

When using system() calls in Perl, do you have to escape the shell args, or is that done automatically?

The arguments will be user input, so I want to make sure this

Answer 1

The answers on your question were very useful. In the end I followed @runrig's advice but then used the core module open3() command so I could capture the output from STDERR as well as STDOUT.

For sample code of open3() in use with @runrig's solution, see my related question and answer:
Calling system commands from Perl