Why use backticks?

[Skip Montanaro]

>>>>> "Asun" == Asun Friere <afriere at yahoo.co.uk> writes:

    Asun> Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1052252772.6620.python-list at python.org>...
    Iwan> Is there any use for them except making code harder to read ? :-)
    >> 
    >> They make Perl folks more comfortable when first introduced to Python.
    >> 
    >> Skip
    Asun> Why would they make Perl folks any more comfortable?  It's not like
    Asun> "files = `ls -1`" is going to give them much joy.

My apologies.  There was an implicit smiley in that mail.  Here it is,
decloaked:

    :-)

Skip