You could just use junction and create a symlink to the directory involved and then add that to the path.

junction E:\VDS\ "E:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\"
[download]

Then edit your system PATH enviornment variable to include E:\VDS _before_ the real directory and reconfig CPAN which will autodiscover the new location of the nmake. This way CPAN is happy, you are happy, VDS is happy, and you don't have an incomprehensible directory name in your path.

Plus knowing about junction and sysinternals is probably in general a good thing. :-)

PS, let this be a lesson for you. Never install VDS into a directory path with spaces in it. In fact, if its for dev purposes or you are doing anything *nixy (ie using cygwin stuff) then you should avoid spaces in file names in general. On my PC the only thing that goes in x:\Program Files is MS office and other pure MS crap. Anything dev or third party goes in a rationally named directory, preferably on a different partition so you can nuke your OS and MS apps without toasting everything else (or at least theres something saveable on the other partition). :-)
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demerphq

_{<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...}