A couple of basic debugging tests need to be applied here:

1. Have you proven that you're getting to the 2nd open statement?
2. Have you proven you're actually spending time in the loop?

It seems to me that it the program 'proggie.exe' never exits, then if open() uses a system() call internally, and not a fork(), it's waiting for the program to finish before the output will be passed back to the calling process (i.e. your script).

In a *nix land, this might work, I don't know for sure. But in a Windows environment, I think you're going to have problems.

I would recommend turning off buffering ($| = 1) and putting some judicious print statements to make sure you're getting as far as you think you are.

--Chris

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