I tried using <STDIN> in EditPlus, and it crashes every time!

EditPlus is a text editor, right? And you're trying to run perl as a tool, executing your script in a hidden manner, and capturing its output into an editor window? I don't know what terminology EditPlus uses, but if I'm right, you should know what I mean: it's as if running a compiler from within the editor.

Well, I guess that Perl doesn't actually crash, but that it hangs — waiting for input, which it can't get because you can't enter it.

I can't think of a quick solution right now, except for not doing it this way, and instead, run the script from the command line (also known as the "DOS prompt"). For non-interactive scripts, running a script from within the editor is just fine.

Getting user input in another manner, via a GUI, is another, neat solution, however, it requires a lot of work, and I don't think a module for doing an "inputbox" (like a messagebox with a text widget — as available in VBscript, and Javascript too, IIRC) is available. Yet. You probably wouldn't want to use it anyway because you won't install modules </sneer>