What does this command in Perl do?

Question

An entire shell command can be executed like a function, returning its output in place. This is done by surrounding the command with parentheses and prefixing a dollar sign:

u$(perl -e 'print "na";')me

Why do we type u + the command then followed by me? Why don't we just do this?

$(perl -e 'print "uname";')

What is the differences and the goal of the first method?

Answer 1

The author's just being cute. There's no practical reason to write:

u$(perl -e 'print "na";')me

versus:

$(perl -e 'print "uname";')

They do the same thing. Really, there's no need for Perl at all when it comes down to it. In a real script you'd just write:

uname

Answer 2

The author want to hide the word 'uname' from a grep search. Your intentions are not good...