Question

I am running a program that I would periodically like to restart. I prefer to pass exec a list so that the shell is not involved as follows:

    // Do stuff 
    .
    .
    exec $^X, $0, @ARGV;

When I do this (on Windows) and $^X contains spaces using the above it treats $^X as multiple items and fails.

The following works just fine, but starts a subshell in addition to the script:

    # Do stuff 
    .
    .
    exec "\"$^X\" $0 @ARGV" ;

This is not a huge deal, but I would like to learn how to execute in a list context if possible.

Things I have tried:

    exec "\"$^X\"", $0, @ARGV;
    exec "\\\"$^X\\\"", $0, @ARGV;
    exec "'$^X'", $0, @ARGV;  # Even though Windows doesn't like '

Also:

    push @restart, $^X, $0, @ARGV;
    print $restart[0];
    exec @restart;

The print statement correctly shows the executable with the space in it as the first item in the array.

I have copied the perl executable to a location that does not contain spaces in its path and from there exec given a list works.

Answer 1

Windows files have a regular name and a “short” name for backwards compatibility with the golden age of DOS. For the specific case of $^X = 'C:\Program Files\perl\perl.exe, something like C:/Progra~1/perl/perl.exe would probably work.

For a more general solution, see the Win32 and the GetShortPathName function. Then you could call

exec Win32::GetShortPathName($^X), $0, @args;

(in some cases you may want to wrap $0 and the arguments in GetShortPathName, too).