Many solutions -

Solution 1
Run it under the DOS prompt!

Solution 2
Add sleep(5); to the end of your script to wait for 5 seconds, long enough for you to inspect its output, whether it has failed or not.

Solution 3
having STDERR persist in a visible form when the program is launched in this way

You could create a short-cut to your perl script, and modify the property of the shortcut to something like -

C:\Perl\bin\Perl.exe C:\Perl-examples\example.pl 2> C:\Perl-examples\e
+xample.log
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Which will redirect your STDERR to a log file when you double click on the short-cut.

Solution 4
Capture stuff printed to STDERR in your program, and pause at the end if anything was printed to STDERR. The perl script will only pause when there is something printed to STDERR.

  use IO::Capture::Stderr;
  my $capture = IO::Capture::Stderr->new();
  $capture->start();       # start captured


  # your stuff here...

  print STDERR "...\n";    # STDERR is captured
  print "...\n";           # STDOUT is not captured



  # at the end
  $capture->stop();        # stop capture
  my @err = $capture->read;
  if ($#err >= 0) {        # any captured error?
    print "$_" for @err;   # print stderr to screen
    <STDIN>;               # wait for input
  }
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