From JohnLopez@vandorndemag.com

I am executing a Perl program under the CPAN distribution for Win95, release 5.00502. The program executes well, calling certain external services that I need including a Win32 version of RCP and RSH, as well as a command line call to a CAD file converter. All is functional and works appropriately.

I downloaded ActivePerl on a WinNT box, configured it, and run the program. Again, it executes without error, however it seems to blow past the system(); function without execution. I created a small test program that simply does​:

  $cmd=sprintf("dir > test.txt");
  system($cmd);

It is apparent that the system() command is not functioning at all. Since I have some code that read from redirection of command output from a Unix server that I am RSHing to, obviously the files are not created on the WinNT machine, and the program die()s on the attempted open() to the file.

Further, to hedge against an ActivePerl issue, I downloaded DOSPERL from CPAN and configured it on the same NT box. It does the same thing. System() does not function.

The only discernable difference that I can think of is that I configure dcom95.exe on the Win95 box. But to my understanding that is not needed on WinNT 4.0 or >, and from the associated documentation I understood that it should not be implemented on the above, only for Win95. Aside from this, to my knowledge, the Perl environments are the same.

I understand that you surely are inundated with mail from around the world, but please consider this email. I have a mission critical application that must be deployed soon on the WinNT configuration to execute both interactively with the character based interface that I have provided for this beta run, and in CGI mode for later implementations.

You assistance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Best Regards,

John Lopez
contract programmer
Van Dorn Demag Corporation

From [Unknown Contact. See original ticket]

'dir' is not an executable -- so you can't execute it with system