Remember that "dir" is not an executable. It's a shell built-in. So try "cmd /c dir" as your command (and thus your executable is "cmd"). Though, really, dir is a bad example because it's so trivial to do inside perl. Other built-ins may be more difficult/impossible to emulate in perl, so the question is still more or less valid as a general question, just not so much for this particular example.

In reply to Re^3: Opening not-existing command - Error Handling by Tanktalus
in thread Opening not-existing command - Error Handling by Dirk80

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