starts a command prompt .exe

It depends on what you mean by that. ww assumed you meant a console program, but maybe you do mean a command prompt, like cmd.exe. The trick is the cmd.exe 'start' command, which creates a new console window, otherwise it will use the parent window. This is based on one I use:

use warnings;
use strict ;

my $temp = '"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\bi
+n\vcvars32.bat"';

my $cmd = "start $ENV{comspec} /k $temp";

if (system ($cmd)) {
    warn 'command failed with '.$? >> 8;
}
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