tye Giving it a straight string System("/dirstruct/dirstruct2/cgi-bin/subdir/progname static_argument_value"); produced the same effect.
i0cgi-bin's permissions are "root html rwxrwxr-x" cgi-bin/subdir's are "wombat apache rwxrwxr-x" the program I'm trying to run is "wombat wombat rwxr--r-x" and the target app is "wombat apache rwx--x--x"