How to quote system () and a path with spaces?

matze77 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all!
How could i mask this? Doublequotes are not working ...

system("if not exist "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\desktop\\gast_2005.exe" copy \\\\server\\groups\\support\\gast_2005.exe "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\desktop"")

echo %allusersprofile%
C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\All Users
[download]

The spaces are the problem ...
Thanks
MH

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Re: How to quote system () and a path with spaces? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 10, 2009 at 07:13 UTC
Put double-quotes around it. And how do you place double-quotes in a double-quoted string? Escape them with backslahes.	[reply]
Re^2: How to quote system () and a path with spaces? by matze77 (Friar) on Nov 10, 2009 at 11:58 UTC
Note to myself: Reread documentation ... Thanks @ all MH	[reply]
Re: How to quote system () and a path with spaces? by cdarke (Prior) on Nov 10, 2009 at 09:06 UTC
or, use single quotes. You are not doing any interpolation (variable and special character substitution) within the system command, so there is no need to use double-quotes around the outside. Even if you were you could use qq: `system(qq(if not exist "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\desktop\\gast_2005.exe" cop +y \\\\server\\groups\\support\\gast_2005.exe "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\\desk +top"))` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How to quote system () and a path with spaces? by rovf (Priest) on Nov 10, 2009 at 09:41 UTC
`system(qq(if not exists "....." copy ...));` [download] Although one might ask why you want to shell out at all, if you can do the same as easily within Perl... -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply] [d/l]