You are suffering from buffering somewhere. I did: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -wl
select STDERR;
$|=1;
print $$;
sleep 1;
print qx(./theProgram);

[download]
and it worked as expected.
[]s, HTH, Massa (κς,πμ,πλ)

In reply to Re: Ulimit makes program hang by massa
in thread Ulimit makes program hang by memo2005

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