One of the many things that I hate about Windows is how it automatically ("helpfully") closes DOS windows when they quit. This is most annoying when the program die()d, as you don't get a chance to read the error message. So here's a snippet that detects if the program was double-clicked, or run from a command line, and alters %SIG{__DIE__} appropriatly.

Of course, Windows 9* does this differently than Windows NT/2000, so there are two different environment variables that get checked. Actually, I only had a Windows 98 and a Windows 2000 machine to test this on, so /msg me if this works / doesn't work on Windows 95 or NT. 
$SIG{__DIE__} = sub {
  # PROMPT is for NT/2000, CMDLINE is for 95/98
  return unless !defined $ENV{PROMPT} or (defined $ENV{CMDLINE} and $E
+NV{CMDLINE} eq 'WIN');
  print shift,"This window will close in 10 seconds." and sleep 10 and
+ exit;
} if $^O =~ /Win32/;

[download]

Update: Per tye's suggestion, I moved the return unless $^O =~ /Win32/ outside of the __DIE__ assignment, so the handler is not even changed if we're not under Windows.

Update the second: A fellow monk has made this code into a module and put it on CPAN as Win32::Die. Check it out!

In reply to Watching Perl die() under Win32 by Chmrr

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