You need to quote the command as well if it contains spaces. ie. This will work as. The inner, backslash-escaped quotes will be passed to the shell.

my $ret = system( "\"D:\\Program Files\\bin\\t.pl\"" );
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However, rather than having to escape the inner quotes and double the backslashes, it's easier to make use of perls profusion of quoting operators.

my $ret = system( q[ "D:\Program Files\bin\t.pl" ]);
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or

my $ret = system( '"D:\Program Files\bin\t.pl"' );
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As an example

P:\test>copy con "d:\program files\test.pl8"
print "Hi there! from $0";
^Z
        1 file(s) copied.


P:\test>perl
system( '"d:\program files\test.pl8"' ) and warn 'Failed with: ', $?;
^Z
Hi there! from D:\program files\test.pl8
P:\test>
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Hope that clarifies things a bit.

That works and helps, thanks!
-sureshr

C:\>more foo bar baz.pl
Cannot access file C:\foo

C:\>more "foo bar baz.pl"

print "foo bar baz.pl says hi";

C:\>perl 
my @args = ( $^X, 'foo bar baz.pl' );
warn "  while going through the shell ret = ".system "@args";
warn "  while avoding the shell ret = ".system {$args[0]} @args;

__END__
Can't open perl script "foo": No such file or directory
  while going through the shell ret = 512 at - line 2.
foo bar baz.pl says hi  while avoding the shell ret = 0 at - line 3.
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