#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use IPC::Open3; my($in, $out, $err, $pid); open( $out, ">&STDOUT" ) or die "Can't dup STDOUT to OUTPUT: $!\n"; open( $err, ">&STDERR" ) or die "Can't dup STDERR to OUTERR: $!\n"; eval { $pid = open3($in, $out, $err, @ARGV) }; die "open3 gave trouble: $@\n" if $@; print "It is running\n"; close $in; print "stdout:\n"; print while <$out>; close $out; print "stderr:\n"; print while <$err>; close $err; __END__ # this is expected ./open3 echo "Hello World" It is running stdout: Hello World stderr: # this is confusing the proverbial out of me ./open3 nosuchcommand It is running stdout: stderr: open3 gave trouble: open3: exec of nosuchcommand failed at ./open3 line 15 # The die obviosly ran but the code did not die, # ran to completion regardless then printed the error