but I really don't think it should or does make any difference for the compiler tools.

My worry is that it may cause problems for such things as Inline.pm or ExtUtils::MakeMaker or various other cpan packages that involve compiling (some packages will try to compile little C snippets to see if your C compiler is available). Not all of these packages are smart enough to handle the various cross platform issues that come up, especially not spaces in the install paths.

I _strongly_ recommend that you install as much as possible in paths with no spaces for this reason. For instance I usually install Visual Studio dotNet in E:\dotNet and not in the MS recommended ditrectories. Ive never had a problem as long as I did this. However every time i forget about this (when I build a new machine for instance) and I always end up getting bitten and having to junction or reinstall. So while im sure a lot of stuff will work fine, i think the safest plan, and the lowest stress is to avoid them. After all its always when you have 6 minutes to get something done that a CPAN install blows up and starts wining about not being able to find the compiler that is most definately there. :-)

OTOH, im not going to get too strung out about it, after all Ive already installed them in directories without spaces in their names so it wont be me getting bitten. :-p