This really is a great post, sometimes it doesn't seem to be immediately sufficient to check for $^O and recollect what system commands to execute...UnxUtils gives you a front to execute *nix commands right on MSWin if you seek such functionality, it works for me just fine..

Here's a quick shot at it:

• create a folder (independent folder) for it, I named the folder 'UnixUtils'- note the tool is UnxUtils- and its path is 'C:\UnixUtils'.
• Unzip the package to that folder.
• Edit the perl 'Path' in the 'environmental variables' to include a path to 'C:\UnixUtils\usr\local\wbin'

You're good to go...

#This is from a Windoze box cmd :
C:\Documents and Settings\m>perl -
print `ls -la`;
__END__
total 10817
drwxrwxrwx   1 user     group           0 Jun  6  2009 .
drwxrwxrwx   1 user     group           0 May 28  2009 ..
drwxrwxrwx   1 user     group           0 Jun 13  2009 01-First Week
drwxrwxrwx   1 user     group           0 Jun 18  2009 02-Second Week
drwxrwxrwx   1 user     group           0 Jun 29  2009 03-Third Week
drwxrwxrwx   1 user     group           0 Jul  4 07:31 04-fourth week
[download]

check the page http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ it got some of the commands supported by the UnxUtils tool though the page is not so up-to-date but it can give a nice overview.