You wrote:

    open(shortcuts,"location.txt" || die"Can't open the stinkin' file"
+);
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Instead, use something like this:

    open SH,"location.txt" or die"Can't open the stinkin' file";
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1. In spite of people telling you to use -w and use strict; there are no 'my' keywords in front of the @file or $line variables, so the program won't even try to run.
2. system() does not do what you expect. Unless the program you're calling explicitly detaches itself as a process internally, only the first program will execute, because system() will be waiting for the program to execute before starting the next item.
3. I don't know about ActiveState and any of the other builds, but the build of 5.005_03 under NT, if you don't encapsulate paths with spaces in quotes, the program won't be found. You either need to include quotes in the string, programatically, before calling system(), alter your data to have quotes around the strings in the 'location.txt' file, or use (gag!) 8.3 filename nomenclature. NT is smart enough, however, to not care about the direction of the path slashes (CMD.EXE cares, but the system internally does not, and really hasn't since about DOS 5.0 or so), and we can add the quotes programmatically, so we'll do that.
4. The @file and $line variables could be eliminated. I was debating if there was any merit in reading the lines before executing them, and I can't find any compelling reason to do so before executing them.
5. You could optionally include the data with the program. Depending on the programming methodology you subscribe to, some call for separating the data from the program to the extent that you should be using mySQL with a browser interface to update the paths. Or, if this is a utility script, and you don't like unnecessary data files cluttering up your disk, and you want to make *sure* there is some data within the program, you can include it as part of the program, in a __DATA__ section. I'll take this tact, since you're probably not going to be making a CPAN submission.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

while (<DATA>)
{
        chomp;
        system ("start \"$_\" \"$_\"") && die "Can't execute $_\n";
}

__DATA__
c:/program files/netscape/communicator/program/netscape.exe 
c:/Program Files/Netscape/Communicator/Winamp/winamp.exe 
c:/Program Files/Netscape/Communicator/Program/AIM/aim.exe
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Try wrapping your code in tags.

As Ozymandias said, use strict and -w. Also, if you are going to report an error, you might want to know why the error occurred: use $! to report the error message.

I heard someone say once that you should use all caps to differentiate filehandles from other words in your code.

Why use "|| die" inside the parenthesis? Isn't it just fine outside of them?

You should also error check your 'system' call, but since 'system' returns 0 as the successful response, use && instead of ||.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# untitled1.pl

use strict;

open(SHORTCUTS,"location.txt") || die"Can't open file: $!";
@file = <SHORTCUTS>;
close(SHORTCUTS) || die "Can't close file: $!";
foreach $line (@file) {
        system($line) && die "Can't execute $line: $!";
}
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J. J. Horner
Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix
jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org/

Try it this way. Others will add more changes.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w 
# untitled1.pl 
use strict;

open(shortcuts,"location.txt" || die"Can't open the stinkin' file"); 
@file = ; 
close(shortcuts); 
foreach $line (@file) { 
# The chomp isn't necessary. And you don't need the backticks.
  system($line);
}

location.txt 
c:/program files/netscape/communicator/program/netscape.exe 
c:/Program Files/Netscape/Communicator/Winamp/winamp.exe 
c:/Program Files/Netscape/Communicator/Program/AIM/aim.exe
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- Ozymandias