The answer (unless the anon post is not by the OP, anonypl -- which I grant may be the case) in Re: Strange problem with Windows 7 command line and perl re using the FULL (emphasis supplied) path, as suggested by poj, seems to mean that line I asked about is NOT the path to perl.exe, be it strawberry or anything else.

Am I missing something? The path with the intermediate "c" doesn't work here because the path -- unsurprisingly -- can't be found. But that's not the problem in the OP, and the node mentioned in para 1 shows the machine finding perl cheerfully, in the absence of the extra "c."

IOW, I'm not convinced by the parent to which I'm directly replying and FreeReekingBeerMonk's reply, while presumptively accurate, doesn't address the use of a possibly erroneous path to find perl.exe.