in reply to Re: Re: Viewing a PDF file from a Perl program
in thread Viewing a PDF file from a Perl program

indeed fork is the only way to go.

other replys have suggested: 

system start => acrord32 => $pdf_file;
# or
system start => $pdf_file;

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neither of which has any hope of running anywhere but Windows.

for cross-platform-ability have a config setting for the reader executable.

# in child after fork (close STD* for good measure)
close STDIN;
close STDOUT;
close STDERR;
system $cfg{PDFViewer}, $pdf_file;

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i'm sure there are modules on CPAN that abstract Running a program for multiple OSs.

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