I haven't been using Perl for very long so I'm hoping that someone can steer me in the right direction with this.

I need to run an external batch script from a Perl script to automate some testing I'm performing. This batch script monitors a directory for changes (files added, deleted, modified) and updates a web server accordingly (installing an application added to the folder, for example). When I call the batch script using system(), it starts monitoring the directory, but it doesn't allow me to proceed onto the next statement in my script (which is to copy a file into the directory) until the monitoring ends.

I suppose I need a separate process or thread to run which waits until the batch script is run and finished setting up the monitoring before copying a file into the monitored directory. I'm not sure what the best way to approach this is and I need a technique that works on both Linux and Windows.

Any suggestions?

In reply to Copying a file while running an external batch script by mgperl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.