When I try to run this program on linux, like so:

lucky$ google perl monks

it displays a nice results page of all the searches for perl monks, but lynx seems to be running in the background: any keyboard action on my part, like up/down arrows or enter, are interpreted by the shell. I can't interact w/lynx at all; when I do ps -aux, I find "lynx (defunct)" listed. I thought exec() meant that perl replaced itself with whatever you're exec()ing -- what am I missing?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# google:  A quick and dirty way of searching google for the arguments
# given on the command line, hampered only by the fact that it 
# doesn't work

use strict;
my $search="http://www.google.com/search?q=";
foreach my $arg (@ARGV) {
    $search .= $arg . " ";
}
$search =~ s/\s/+/g;
$search =~ s/\"/%22/g;
$search =~ s/\'/%27/g;
$search =~ s/\+$//;
$search .= "&btnG=Google+Search";
$search = "--cookies $search";
exec "lynx $search";

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I am now blessing your keyboard...

In reply to Why can't I start up lynx with these arguments? by Saint Aardvark

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