My suggestion is to not respawn. Just overwrite $0! $0=rel2abs($0) unless file_name_is_absolute $0; That is, "lie" to make it look like your script was started with an absolute path.

This would not do here. The point is that I want to see the process using the absolute path in the Windows Process table (for example, when looking at it using, say, Process Explorer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx.