That is the way that system() behaves. I do not know that this is the best way to address this problem, but if you make your calls in between backtics, the script will wait for the calls to return. You could try this: 
if ($filename{$num}ne '')
            {
            `/3rdparty/perl/bin/sunos5/lwp-request -p http://proxy-syr
+.global.lmco.com $hostname$url -C $user:$password>$temp$file`;  
            `chmod 777 $temp$file`;
            `acroread -toPostScript $temp$file`;
            `lp -d ep5_hpp01 $temp *.ps`;
            }

[download]
Or you could also look into the wait function.

In reply to Re: Wait by CubicSpline
in thread system() not waiting by warwick

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.