Hey guys, I could really use some help.
I've got a desktop application in Perl running on Windows that grabs data and writes it to a formatted file, and opens the file for viewing in its own view program.

The problem is that, if the viewer program of the file (notepad, googEarth, etc), isn't already open, the call to open the file never returns home and my program hangs.
Im using
    print "Opening file: $File\r\n";
    my $returnValue = system($File);
#    my $returnValue = exec($File);
    print "Done.  ReturnValue $returnValue\r\n";

[download]
So if the data viewing program is already open I'm fine and it runs great. If however I open the file and the viewer is not open, Perl will hang at the system or exec calls waiting for the exe to quit. Is there a way to spawn the system call in a separate thread or some other means such that I'm not hanging the program waiting for the user to close the viewing exe?
Thanks!

In reply to Opening files for other exes in Windows by ecuguru

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