Hi james28909,

From exec:

The exec function executes a system command and never returns

You're probably thinking of backticks aka qx, although that will also wait for the completion of the command before returning, so I don't think it'll help here. (BTW, a good alternative to qx is Capture::Tiny.)

What might work is opening a pipe (Using open() for IPC) or using a module like IPC::Run (I haven't used the latter myself yet but it seems to be a good module).

However, using those in the OP's line_process.pl won't fix the problem if dhcp_line_dispacher.pl is still buffering its output ;-)

Regards,
-- Hauke D