you can also set it up as follows:

use File::Spec;

my $dir=File::Spec->catdir('//server','share','folder','subfolder');
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Note that the \\ has been reversed from normal, this does work, we do this all the time with our scripts on Windows. Also, you can do the following:

chdir $dir or die "Cannot change to $dir. $!";
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We do this quite frequently with our Windows Perl scripts. You cannot do this from the commandline (if I remember correctly).