Forgive me if I am confusing you with someone else, but didn't we discuss this a few days ago in the chatter box? If so, I know it is sometimes hard to follow what is happening in the chatterbox, so I'll repeat here what we suggested. If I recall, the batch file is something you inherited and can't change. So we suggested that you wrap the batch file in a second batch file that looks something like this:

REM run the script that sets environment variable FOO 
call foo.bat
REM now %FOO% is set in the environment

REM Corion;s suggestion: if you need the entire environment
REM set called by itself dumps one line each VAR=VALUE
set
[download]

If dumping all environment variables is too much, you could just dump selected environment variables like this:

REM run the script that sets environment variable FOO 
call foo.bat
REM now %FOO% is set in the environment

REM my suggestion: send just a few to stdout
echo FOO=%FOO%
echo BAR=%BAR%
[download]

Then in your Perl script, you call your second batch file like this:

use strict;
use warnings;

#backticks convert anything sent to stdout into a string
#so this should fill $sEnvironment with assignments
my $sEnvironment=`wrapper.bat`

#now parse $sOutput and store the various VAR=VAL pairs
my @aAssignment=split(/[\r\n]+/,$sEnvironment);
foreach my $sAssignment (@aAssignment) {
  $sAssignment =~ /^(\w+)=(.*)$/;
  $ENV{$1}=$2;
}
[download]

Did you try that? What problems did you find?

Best, beth

Update: fixed error in call to foo.bat, identified by Corion via private message.