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

I have a .batch file that already is executing Perl code. I can provide more details on this if needed, but since I don't know Perl I'm not sure what else to say about it. This batch file has Perl functions in it. In one of them I want to call a batch file that I created. I try this:

system("c:\myfolder\my.bat");

Now the Perl code is executing on a different drive, which is why I specify C:. Could this be a problem?

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Re: why isn't bat file getting called?
by Anonymous Monk on May 02, 2012 at 18:33 UTC
    Backslash has a special meaning in quoted strings. Use forward slash instead, or escape the special meaning of backslashes by applying backslashes. 
    system("c:/myfolder/my.bat");
system("c:\\myfolder\\my.bat");

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      Oh, thanks. That was it!

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Re: why isn't bat file getting called?
by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on May 03, 2012 at 00:44 UTC

    If you are new to Perl, do yourself a favor and always enable warnings and strictures at the start of your code, then do youself another favor and use diagnostics:
        use warnings;
        use strict;
        use diagnostics; 

    >perl -le
"use warnings;
 use strict;
 my $s =  \"c:\myfolder\my.bat\";
 print qq{'$s'};
"
Unrecognized escape \m passed through at -e line 1.
Unrecognized escape \m passed through at -e line 1.
'c:myfoldermy.bat'

>perl -le
"use warnings;
 use strict;
 use diagnostics;
 my $s =  \"c:\myfolder\my.bat\";
 print qq{'$s'};
"
Unrecognized escape \m passed through at -e line 1 (#1)
    (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
    recognized by Perl.  The character was understood literally, but t
+his may
    change in a future version of Perl.

'c:myfoldermy.bat'

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