[ruby-talk:9986] system command on Windows(Arrgghhh!)

I'm simply trying to run an app in a Dos window under Windows(98|NT|2K) -
it has to run on at least all of those Windoze types - 
like:

system("cmd.exe /c #{ENV[CYPRESS_DIR]}/bin/warp.exe")

On NT this seems to work OK.

I changed it to use command.com for Win9x:
system("command.com /c #{ENV[CYPRESS_DIR]}/bin/warp.exe")
-or even:
system("command.com /c c:/warp/bin/warp.exe")

and I get absolutely nothing out of it on Win98, yet I can run the exact
same thing from the command line (well, I have to change the environment
variable to the real path or course - and I have had the program print
out the value of ENV[CYPRESS_DIR] just to make sure it's set right).

I also tried using backticks - either on works on NT, but neither works on
Win98 even if I hardcode the path instead of relying on the env var.  

I've also noticed another discrepancy in behaviour between NT and 98 in
the case of backticks.  On NT I can have:

`cmd.exe /c c:/WARP/bin/warp.exe` and it doesn't mind the use of '/', 


Anyway, I thought I had all of this figured out until i started trying it
on Win98.  I discovered that there is a start command that will run the
executable, but it runs it in a seperate window and I've found that if
there is an error in the executable being run (like having a compiler
compile a nonexistent file) that the other window just hangs there and
never returns.  Has anyone figured out how to get all of this to work
consistently?  I really like Ruby and I would like to use it for this
project, but when it comes to the system and ``'s, well, they just work on
Perl on all the WinXX platforms I've tried without any playing around...
Can we get that kind of behaviour on Ruby eventually?

Phil