jcwren suggested "I can't remember if Win98 supports pipes like NT/Unix. I wonder if it's using a temp file, and when the file is empty it's automatically closing it. Perhaps the error is from trying to close an already closed file." So I changed the code to do 
close(IPCONFIG);
last;

[download]
after I had recognised the IP Address and the warning message has gone.

Thanks for that useful advice.

In reply to RE: Unable to close filehandle properly by Odud
in thread Unable to close filehandle properly by Odud

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