The quotes to "escape" spaces in file names are only required when the file name is part of a command line that is going to be split on spaces. The indirect object to system is not part of the command line so drop the quotes. That makes it work for me.

That makes it break differently for me. I took out the quotes, and get

Unrecognized command: Files\Microsoft
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which is why I added the quotes in the first place.

It also shows that I get a different error for a genuine "not found", as opposed to a not-found making it look for CMD as a fallback... hmm, maybe it's a read herring, and the error is from VS.exe itself, not from Perl! I'll explore that.

(Meanwhile, why does it work for you without the quotes?)

—John

Okay, I even went out of my way and renamed some things so that I had spaces in my path but that didn't change my results. This type of stuff has changed between versions of Perl so perhaps that explains our different results. I was doing this testing using v5.6.0 ActivePerl build 616.

I suspect that Perl's 'if CreateProcess() fails, then just retry with CreateProcess("cmd.exe","/c ...",...)' logic is masking the real error here. I'd think that using an indirect object with system would disable that logic, but I haven't checked that.

In any case, you can always do:

use Win32;
$vss= Win32::GetShortPathName( "D:\\Program Files\\"
    . "Microsoft Visual Studio\\Common\\VSS\\win32\\ss.exe");
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and I'm pretty sure that will fix errors due to spaces in file names.

You also might want to try Win32::Process to see if you can reproduce why Perl thinks CreateProcess() is failing.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

$VSS = 'D:\progra~1\micros~3\common\VSS\win32\ss.exe';
#...
system($VSS,'ss','checkout -I-');
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Good idea re the spaces. I'll try that.

Changing the parens changed the meaning, though. Take out the 'ss' if you do that.

Don't know if this is just a copy-and-paste artifact, but it looks like you're missing one backslash: my $VSS= '"D:\Program ... should be my $VSS= '"D:\\Program ...

HTH

'A\B' and 'A\\B' mean the same thing. Only \' and \\ have special meanings in a single-quoted string; other single backslashes are unchanged and non-special.

By "paths" do you mean $VSS, or $ENV{PATH}? Either could have an effect. It might help to characterize the change (e.g., what was the old value?)

"paths" meaning where VS.exe is, where the repository is, where my project files are. They are hard-coded into the script, like the $VSS.

Here is the actual error text: Can't spawn "cmd.exe": No such file or directory at d:\program files\util\manage_vss.perl line 22.