Which makes no sense if there is absolutely no shell interaction

That's not exactly correct. Remember the magic of Perl---the impossible is always possible. Here's an example. It requires: IPC::System::Simple.

!/usr/bin/perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;
use IPC::System::Simple qw(capturex systemx);

my $PATH  = $ENV{'PATH'};
my $SHELL = $ENV{'SHELL'};

my $path = '/root/Desktop/test a folder/this script.sh';
my @arr1 = ( "printenv", "PATH" );
capturex(@arr1);

my @arr2 = ( "echo", "$PATH" );
systemx(@arr2);

my @arr3 = ("$SHELL", "$path");
my @script = system(@arr3);
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