Yes, that works, but when you start adding the full path which also includes spaces, it fails.
The issue is with getting the quoting and escaping set correctly for the shell.
c:\test>dir "C:\Music\Ray LaMontagne"
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 4CD3-F30A
Directory of C:\Music\Ray LaMontagne
07/30/2015 02:31 PM <DIR> .
07/30/2015 02:31 PM <DIR> ..
07/30/2015 02:31 PM 0 2010 - God Willin' & The Creek
+Don't Rise.txt
1 File(s) 0 bytes
2 Dir(s) 938,700,210,176 bytes free
c:\test>type Perl-1.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
# I created this full path for the test
my $fn = q(C:\Music\Ray LaMontagne\2010 - God Willin' & The Creek Don'
+t Rise);
print $fn, $/;
#my $fn = "this 'is' a text file.txt";
my @s = stat $fn;
print Dumper \@s;
c:\test>Perl-1.pl
C:\Music\Ray LaMontagne\2010 - God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise
$VAR1 = [];
I've delt with this issue before and always need to run a bunch of tests to get the quoting/escaping correct.
