Don't think using parenthesis in dirnames is that unusual ;)?! It's not just that single parenthesis at the end that causes this behavior. Paths like this also won't open without that extra space: 
my $fn = q{ C:\img\del me\pic (images)[2k]\00000253.jpg"};

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Tried with perl 5.10 also, but same behaviour: 
#works (note extra space required)
"H:\TEST\ActivePerl-5.10.0.1001-MSWin32-x86-283495\perl\bin\perl.exe" 
+-e "my $fn = ' \"C:\img\del me\three (3\00000253.jpg\"'; system($fn)"

#Doesn't work
"H:\TEST\ActivePerl-5.10.0.1001-MSWin32-x86-283495\perl\bin\perl.exe" 
+-e "my $fn = '\"C:\img\del me\three (3\00000253.jpg\"'; system($fn)"

'C:\img\del' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

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But since this doesn't work either (as mentioned by ikegami): 
cmd.exe /c "C:\img\del me\three (3\00000253.jpg"

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Then I don't consider this whole problem to be perl related.

What I now need to understand is why the "(" char is treated in this special way in windows and what other chars create similar weird behaviour? Didn't think "(" was spcecial "meta-char", like | or > etc, that needed to be escaped (and even escaping it with ^ also didn't work).

In reply to Re^4: win32 parenthesis system weirdness by ldln
in thread win32 parenthesis system weirdness by ldln

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