Windows98 (Perl 5.6.1) outputs this: Bad command or file name Writing line 1 Writing line 2 Writing line 3 Writing line 4 Writing line 5 Writing line 6 Writing line 7 Writing line 8 Writing line 9 Writing line 10 Wrote 1 lines of text While Linux (Perl 5.005) gives me this: Writing line 1 Broken pipe Stein says the script will do this: Writing line 1 Read_three got: This is line number 1 Writing line 2 Read_three got: This is line number 2 Writing line 3 Read_three got: This is line number 3 Writing line 4 Broken pipe