pdflatex and system

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

Hello:
I've made a program in Perl with the output in latex. Now i want to generate the pdf file with pdflatex. I'm using windows, so i've installed miktex in the folder of my project.
When i call system with

system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex")
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all is ok, and i obtain my file $outputfile.pdf, but i think that itsn't elegant to show in the standard output, so i change the call, changing the standard output (or the standard error), to

system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex > $outputfile
+.2.log")
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system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex >? $outputfil
+e.2.log")
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but then my program says:

"'.' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file."
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What's the problem? Why doesn't it work?
I've got a paar question more about system, when the program invoked finish, my program takes the control again. Doesn't it? Can the program invoked not to finish good and be a "zombi" in the system and not finish?
Can someone help me? Thank you.
Yours, sincerely
José Ramón Martínez

Edit g0n - added code tags

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Re: pdflatex and system by holli (Abbot) on Aug 23, 2005 at 09:21 UTC
try `system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex>$outputfile.2 +.log")` [download] (note: no spaces around ">"). For asynchronous execution of an external command, check out ~~`exec()`~~ `fork()` or Win32::Process. Update: bart corrected my error about `exec()`. holli, /regexed monk/	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: pdflatex and system by jeteve (Pilgrim) on Aug 23, 2005 at 09:35 UTC
See also IPC::Run on CPAN, it can simplify what you trying to do :) Hope it helps ! -- Nice photos of naked perl sources here !	[reply]