Windows - Can't find file on PATH, '.' not in PATH

Question

I installed a package (Strawberry Perl) and added its bin directory (C:\Strawberry\perl\bin) to the environment variables. cpan is a package manager, its in there as cpan.bat.

When I try to run it, heres what happens:

C:\Users\horse> cpan -fi "DBD::mysql"
Can't find C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\cpan.bat on PATH, '.' not in PATH.

Its obviously finding the file because how else would it know its exact location: C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\cpan.bat

If I try running cpan.bat directory like this:

C:\Users\horse> C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\cpan.bat  -fi "DBD::mysql"
Can't find C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\cpan.bat on PATH, '.' not in PATH.

Same issue. I don't understand why it needs a '.' in the PATH, but I added it there to see what would happen, and its no longer saying anything about a '.' but I'm still getting the same issue with it not finding cpan.bat:

C:\Users\horse> cpan
Can't find C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\cpan.bat on PATH.

Does anyone know what the issue is here?

Answer 1

The problem was I had two perl.exe files installed, when I ran get-command perl, it said its located in C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\perl.exe. So its using the version that came with with what looks like a CygWin install (C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\ is loaded with unix like commands). So I removed perl.exe from C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin and it fixed the problem.