Well... On a unix system it says:

$ perl -V:sh
sh='/bin/sh';
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But that's exactly my point. This variable should not matter when using system() in the "argument array format". According to official perl documentation, when you use system() in the format:

system('command line with some args and special characters');
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then this might involve calling a local shell. But when you call system() in the format:

system('executable', 'arg1', 'arg2', 'arg3');
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then NO shell should be executed. Only the executable should be run getting the args as they are specified.

As far as I know, on Unix the C-library function 'execv' gets called for this. And it works perfectly well. Even if any of the argN contains special characters or shell metacharacters.

Now... I know that Windows is not Unix, and that on Windows there is no such thing as 'execv'. But even then, I would expect that something similar exists in the OS kernel, and that the Perl implementors (I mean: creators of Perl packages for Windows) are able to run the program, that I specify in the system() call, and pass it my arguments exactly as I specify them at their exact specified positions.

So I'm wondering... Is system() implemented badly on windows ? Or is there really no way in Windows OS to achieve the same behaviour as on Unix (i.e. to make system() simply execute the executable and pass it a stack of arguments) ??