It'd be helpful if you didn't ignore things. It doesn't matter if you call the .exe directly or not. You seem to have a lot of "wired reasons" for doing things and making life difficult for yourself.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32;
use Win32::GuiTest qw(:ALL);

my $calc = "C:\\ProgramData\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\
+\Accessories\\Calculator.lnk";
    
print "nothing else will happen until you close calc.exe\n";
system($calc);

print "you closed calc.exe, moving on...\n";
print "using `start` to launch calc.exe will return once calc.exe is l
+oaded\n"; 

system('start "" "' . $calc . '"');
print "\n\nyep, still running!\n\n";
[download]

it is working thanks but I dint understand the system call.

system('start "" "' . $calc . '"');

could you please help me out with that?

ankit.tayal560 - type start /? in a windows command prompt for more information on what marto is trying to impart.

basically there are 3 ways to start new processes in perl:

• open - open (IN, "program.exe|") or die "couldn't start program.exe"
• system - system('program.exe')
• backticks or qx - qx(program.exe) or `program.exe`

careful what you do when running programs that require external input from users, but in a nutshell what's happinging in system('start "" "' . $calc . '"'); is the same as system('program.exe arg1');

Cheers,
Shadowsong