Here's a better solution, using the ShellExecute API. This works as-is:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
#use diagnostics;
use warnings;
use Win32::API;

my $ShellExecute = new Win32::API("shell32", "ShellExecute", [qw(N P P
+ P P N)], 'N');
my $hWnd;

$ShellExecute->Call($hWnd, 'open', 'c:/rc.d.pdf', undef, undef, 1);
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Try perldoc Win32::API, then find a good API reference. A lot of VB oriented sites will have good info.