side-note to vinoth.ree: if the powers-to-be running your environment would not allow installing a battle-tested Perl module and turn its authors' free hardwork and dilligence to corporate profit, then they will surely freak out screaming if they see you calling an executable without its extension. Alas they probably have no idea and are just cargo-culting.

Calling executables with no extension it's a feature turned into a huge security hole (attributions to the usual culprit). You call C:/Windows/System32/OpenSSH/scp but which one is it? scp.com, scp.exe, scp.bat, scp.cmd, scp.vbs? PATHEXT will tell you that and who knows who and what messed up with that already. (To be fair, Unix has already this problem with PATH, windows has it with both PATH and PATHEXT)

Anyway, a suggestion for the problem at hand: perhaps create a batch file and insert your commands there and make sure that it runs OK. Then call the batch file from your perl script. If that works, then keep altering your quotes ...

bw, bliako