Fellow Monks:

I am starting a non-Perl process using Win32::Process and then trying to wait infinitely for the child to finish. In the meantime, the Perl parent process is checking the Windows clipboard to provide status messages to the user (this is a Tk app). (Therefore I can't use "system" which either waits or doesn't wait.)

If the parent sees that the clipboard is empty, it should fall thru to the $ProcessObj->Wait(INFINITE) statement, which it does, but that statement seems to have no effect. My Perl parent keeps processing and the child does too.

The same problem occurs if I comment out the entire clipboard stuff, so it appears to be strictly a problem with Win32::Process.

Here's the code: 
use Tk;
use Win32::Clipboard;
use Win32::Process;
$::CLIP = Win32::Clipboard();

# lots of code here

Win32::Process::Create($ProcessObj,
        "d:\\mwa\\perlpps\\mwebprep.exe",
        "mwebprep $step",
        0,
        NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
        ".")
|| die Win32ProcessError();

my $emptytries = 0;
my $clip;
while (1)
{
    $clip = Win32::Clipboard::GetText();
    if ($clip)
    {
        $::progresstext->insert('end', $clip . "\n");
        $::progresstext->yview('moveto', 100);
        $::mainwin->update;
        $::CLIP->Empty();
        $emptytries = 0;
        sleep(5);
    }
    else
    {
        $emptytries++;
        last if ($emptytries >= 3);
        sleep(1);
    }
}

$ProcessObj->Wait(INFINITE);

# more code

[download]
Many thanks in advance for any advice!

Stephen

In reply to Win32::Process not waiting by Stephen Toney

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