Strange qx under windows behaviour

leonidlm has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi All,
I encouraged a strange perl behavior.
I am trying to delete a directory (under windows) using:

qx 'rmdir /S /Q \\192.168.16.2\temp\directory';
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But from some reason, a couples of days ago it stopped working! I changed it to:

qx 'cmd /C rmdir /S /Q \\192.168.16.2\temp\directory';
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And now its working perfect again! Can someone explain that behavior ?
Regards.

Comment on Strange qx under windows behaviour Select or Download Code

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Re: Strange qx under windows behaviour by almut (Canon) on Dec 01, 2008 at 13:08 UTC
Just a wild guess. Have you, by any chance, installed a program named `rmdir.exe` (e.g. from UnxUtils) a couple of days ago? AFAIK, it would be called (when found along PATH) in place of the `cmd.exe` built-in `rmdir`, but would presumably choke on `/S /Q`... — see Windows: system("type ...") vs. system("cmd /c type ...") for a similar case.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Strange qx under windows behaviour by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 01, 2008 at 17:50 UTC
I don't see how the former could ever have worked. `>perl -e"print qx'echo /S /Q \\192.168.16.2\temp\directory';" /S /Q \192.168.16.2\temp\directory ^ \|` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Strange qx under windows behaviour by graff (Chancellor) on Dec 02, 2008 at 03:50 UTC
But from some reason, a couples of days ago it stopped working! ... and "stopped working" means... what, exactly? What evidence do you have about its failure to work? Usually, there is some sort of error message, and even when there isn't, there is some specific expectation that is not met, for example: files that should no longer exist are still there, or files that should not have been deleted are gone. (Which was it in your case?) It's hard to explain something when no evidence is provided.	[reply]