Yes, I understant that Citrus Perl would work properly, even if left in the PATH, thanks to citrusvars.bat. My question was if DWIM Perl would still work, if both are left in the PATH.

Sure it was not :)

DWIM perl will still work, but it won't get called when you type perl.exe -V from the current session, because citrus is first in path

all citrusterm/citrusvars is for current session only

Now if you call explicitly absolutedwimperlpath\cpan.bat , it won't call the dwimperlcpan because default pl2bat uses first perl in path ....

Not sure that this has much to do with OPs situation