AFIK, this behaviour is kept even if the shell is not involved.

Apparently not. From win32.c source (circa line 4225): 

    /* initial NULL argument to CreateProcess() does a PATH
     * search, but it always first looks in the directory
     * where the current process was started, which behavior
     * is undesirable for backward compatibility.  So we
     * jump through our own hoops by picking out the path
     * we really want it to use. */

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In reply to Re^8: system and wildcard expansion? by BrowserUk
in thread system and wildcard expansion? by BrowserUk

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