Are you pressing Ctrl+C instead of typing something and pressing ENTER?

The first line is executed, as the file is created (I'd include a "|| die $!" after the open just to be sure...

I can't tell from what you say if the second is executed, but i doubt it isn't.

And as it seems to hang before the third line, I could tell that eighter you're pressing Ctrl+C in the prompt and stopping the program, or it is stopping when trying to read STDIN. Or... you don't have enough disk space to write the string in the third line to the file (which would be almost impossible, as I doubt that the block size is smaller than that string).

But there is no apparent reason to prevent this code from working... Unfortunally I don't have a way to test in the same environment you are. Anyway, I doubt it's a bug in activestate perl. daniel