use File::Copy qw(copy move);
my $filename1 = "/tmp/blah blah blah.txt";
my $filename2 = "/tmp/TargetLocation/blah blah blah.txt";

copy( $filename1, $filename2);
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At a guess you were trying to shell out to "cp", right?

You might try looking at: String::ShellQuote

That depends on whether a shell will interpret the command line that includes the file name. If it will, quotemeta should do it, along with handling lots of other gotchas.

$ perl -e'$_ = "foo bar baz"; print quotemeta, $/'
foo\ bar\ baz
$ 

If there is no shell interpretation, you probably don't need to escape them.

use Win32;
use strict;
my $filename_w_spaces = 'this err.txt';

# the file has to exist to play this game....
if ( -e $filename_w_spaces ) {
    print "$filename_w_spaces\n";

    my $short_filename_wo_spaces
        = Win32::GetShortPathName($filename_w_spaces);
    print "$short_filename_wo_spaces\n";

    my $long_filename_w_spaces
        = Win32::GetLongPathName($short_filename_wo_spaces);
    print "$long_filename_w_spaces\n";
}
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It's my understanding that generation of short names can be turned off, so it's not good to count on them.

Is that an option the Win32 user sets such that programs coming along that use short names get stymied?