my @cmd = "/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
+/Common7/IDE/devenv.exe";

system(@cmd) and die $!;

[download]
Run this code, and it dies for no apparent reason (assuming you've installed VisualStudio in the default location). The reason it dies is the rules that system uses for calling out to the shell:
  1. if @_ > 1 then call execve
  2. if there are meta characters, then use "system -c $_[0]"
  3. otherwise, use split(" ", $_[0]) and send the resulting list to execve.
This fails when you pass a single command with no args, and that command has spaces in it (rather, it fails if you had expected the behavior of the command with args to be the same as when the command has no args). Because @_==1, and the command contains no meta characters, Perl will split the command using the spaces in the command-name, and then call execve with this list. It is not suprising that this fails. The cure is to wrap the core system command with code that handles this corner case.
use subs 'system';
sub system
{
    if ((@_ == 1)
            && ($_[0] =~ /(\S*)\s/)
            && (! -x $1)
            && (-x $_[0]))
    {
        $_[0] = "'$_[0]'";
    }
    CORE::system @_;
}

my @cmd = "/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
+/Common7/IDE/devenv.exe";

system(@cmd) and die $!;

[download]

In reply to system commands with spaces by dpuu

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