"." is always in the front of the PATH in Windows (implicitly), so if system("a.exe"); fails, so would system(".\a.exe");. (system("./a.exe"); just plain won't work.)

But, that's a good thoery

>perl -e"print system 'nonexistant'"
'nonexistant' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
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