> I can exclude from the beginning, methods involving cmd.exe ..

I dont. I always go with strawberry perl portable edition.

Strawberry portable ships with portableshell.bat which permit you to forget PATH because it prepends itself to everything (this setting is not OS wide: it is valid only for this prompt instance):

----------------------------------------------
 Welcome to Strawberry Perl Portable Edition!
 * URL - http://www.strawberryperl.com/
 * see README.TXT for more info
----------------------------------------------
Perl executable: C:\perl5.32.64bit\perl\bin\perl.exe
Perl version   : 5.32.0 / MSWin32-x64-multi-thread

C:\perl5.32.64bit> path

PATH=C:\perl5.32.64bit\perl\site\bin;
C:\perl5.32.64bit\perl\bin;
C:\perl5.32.64bit\c\bin;
C:\WINDOWS\system32;
C:\WINDOWS;
....
[download]

I use also unxutils or gnuwin32 and yes they are both really old, but they used to work. I modify portableshell.bat to include them after strawberry.

Or you can use cygwin or bash for window or .. good luck :)

Once upon a time there was padre perlide but I fear is no more maintained.

Activestate has KomodoIDE available for free (only mail subscrition needed).

Personally I use Notepad++ and the above portableshell.bat

I always avoid file association: I tell the OS all perl files are text documents and I open them with Notepad++ then in my commandline I always use: perl myscript.pl syntax.

L*