A hint: you can do that a bit more readably by using interpolation -- note that Perl won't doubly interpolate, even though the shell might once you pass the value to it:

$cmd = "someshellexe $basepath/$file";
$cmd = quotemeta($cmd);
$rc = qx($cmd); #
[download]

... unless, as I take it, $rc eq 'result code', in which case use $rc = system($cmd), unless the result code is actually in the output of the command, in which case use qx.