thanks for your quick post....maybe i should have used original code, which at moment i don't have access to as it's on a customer site with dial-up and someone else is in there at moment. the original code, which i re-wrote to use arrays. the jist of the original code was:

# no strict or warnings
$bla = "this and that";
$file = "c:\filea";
system("echo $bla > $file");  # this works
if (1==1) #not the actual test, but it goes in this test
{
  system("echo $bla > $file");  #this never occurs
  #if run by an exe that calls Perl -U this_script
  #and passes output to IIS
  #it does work from cmd prompt
}
[download]

is this a perl install issue? stacks? weird stuff!

Chris