Hi,

If you want to both write to and read from another program. The open function lets you do one or the other, but, you can use the standard IPC::Open2 module for the two-ways-communication:

use IPC::Open2;

open2(*README, *WRITEME, $program);
print WRITEME "some input...\n";
$output = <README>;
close(WRITEME);
close(README);
[download]

Take also a look at: perlipc, IPC::Open2, IPC::Open3 if you need take care of STDERR

Also in the Perl FAQ 8 you can find info about, perlfaq8.

Update:Take also a look at XML-RPC, could be interesting for future developments. ;-)

Regards,