You may look at a node I 've already written on the subject: forking and process control or the more basic eplanation Running more than one process (the very basics). This should help you get goind. For further reference read the chapter about IPC in the camel and also look up perldoc -f forkand perldoc -f wait To run dos commands lookup system

Hope this helps,
C-Keen

Update:ooops did I read DOS/Windows? This Advice might be true for Windows NT or Win2000, it is definetly true for unix boxes and most certainly false for 16 bit operating systems w/o multitasking (such as MS DOS) sorry. On those OS you are not able to run Processes simultanously at all