PS: Somewhat related, look at the bonkers way Windows resolves the program to execute from the command line string: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/processt...

PPS: Even less related, there's no exec() in Win32, so you can't write a starter program that does some setup and then runs another program (e.g. specified as a parameter). You need to keep the starter program open and act as a proxy to the started program! See the various dotenv CLI implementations. But I digress.