An end-around for handling "wacky" filename issues on Win32 is to resort to:

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";
}
[download]