'k. Sorry for the bum steer. Strange though, if you can terminate the same program with ^C?

You probably need to look at IPC::Open2 or maybe the Expect program?

I tried kill 1 and kill 9 -- neither work.

The kill is never executed... that's the point. I've got it in my script, but until something kills the pid created by the file handle, the script will not continue.

It's not getting executed...that's the problem. The script will not go anywhere until the $pid is killed. In this case, I have to do it externeally or by typing quit in the terminal. Anyone can emulate this if they've got a Unix-ish system.

my $pid = open(DUMP, "top|") || die $!; # or 'prstat' will work

while ( <DUMP> ) {
    chomp;
    print "$_\n";
}

kill 9, $pid;
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I tried using IOC::Open2, assuming I can write "quit" (which will kill the program) but since script isn't going anywhere...