Really stop WIN32 OLE application

yike has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Below you can find a standard perlscript to open a win32 application (Excel in this case) and close it again; with some actions in between. My problem:
it seems that

$excel->ActiveWorkbook->Close(0);
$excel->Quit();
[download]

is not enough to 'really' close the excel.exe program. This excel.exe is only gone from the taskmanager when the perlscript itself is left. This is especially annoying when it is a perl Tk program, eg. a GUI, where after the interaction with excel, the GUI is not closed If someone has a solution to remove/kill the app in a good way, it would be most appreciated.

$excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application');
if ($@) {
    PrintError("Excel not Installed.\n");
    return 0;
}
unless (defined $excel) {
    $excel = Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit' )
    || (sub { die "Cannot start Excel.\n";return 0 });
}
$sheet = $book->Worksheets("Sheet1");
$sheet->Activate();       

# some actions...
 
$book->SaveAs($excelfile);
$excel->ActiveWorkbook->Close(0);
$excel->Quit();
[download]

Comment on Really stop WIN32 OLE application Select or Download Code

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Re: Really stop WIN32 OLE application by jmcnamara (Monsignor) on Apr 04, 2004 at 22:20 UTC
If you undef the `$excel` instance it should allow Excel to close: `... $excel->Quit(); undef $excel;` [download] Tested and working with WinXP and Excel2003. -- John.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Really stop WIN32 OLE application by tachyon (Chancellor) on Apr 05, 2004 at 01:47 UTC
If undef does not work for you get a sledgehammer and try Win32::KillProcess. This has yet to make CPAN but with it you can just: `use Win32::KillProcess ':all'; $c = connectServer(); my @pids = getProcessPids( $c, 'excel.exe' ); killProcess( $c, @pids );` [download] Outlook is one program that seems to leave instances lurking about even when you really try to do the right thing. cheers tachyon	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Really stop WIN32 OLE application by Grygonos (Chaplain) on Apr 05, 2004 at 14:56 UTC
just a note about the killing of processes this way.. it will kill all your instances of excel.exe if i'm reading it correctly... so you might want to try and find a method of getting the pid of the specific excel.exe that was created by your script....just a note..., undeffing it does also work. Grygonos	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Really stop WIN32 OLE application by tachyon (Chancellor) on Apr 05, 2004 at 16:39 UTC
Did I mention it was like using a sledge hammer to crack a Walnut? :-) cheers tachyon	[reply]
Re: Really stop WIN32 OLE application by Crian (Curate) on Apr 05, 2004 at 10:59 UTC
If all else fails, put the excel-handling in a small Perl script and call it from the gui.	[reply]
Re: Re: Really stop WIN32 OLE application by Anonymous Monk on Apr 05, 2004 at 14:56 UTC
*, I got my proces killed when doing the following: `undef $sheet; undef $book; undef $excel;` [download] just undef $excel wasn't enough. Thx everybody for the suggestions	[reply] [d/l]