Possibly OT a bit, as the specific problem appears to be with Acrobat Reader on Win32...

Acrobat Reader has some unsupported command line functionality. Among the few commands is the following: 
acrord32 /t <file> <printer> <print-driver> <portname>

[download]
..which should open the application iconized, print the document, and close the application. This is supposed to mimic the functionality that you get by dragging and dropping a PDF onto your printer icon. Unfortunately, I've tried with version 5.0 on Win2k and WinNT 4.0, and the application will print but not close (via drag-and-drop or command line).

Now we get to the perl. I'm playing around in Tk, and I'd like to have an event trigger off the printing of a PDF that I've generated. I've tried using system, but it waits for your command to complete, and as the application does not close, it waits and waits and waits.
I'm looking for a way to spawn this application and not care two bits about its completion. Any suggestions?

-=rev=-

In reply to external applications - system? by Reverend Phil

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