Phil, thank you very much for the pointer and the book reference, it got me in the right direction.

The final solution is almost like the one you suggested:

my $buffer = '';
$rdr->blocking(0);
while ($buffer eq '') {
    $rdr->read($buffer,1024);
}
[download]

$rdr->read is just an OO wrapper for read.

The key to making this work was to use $rdr->blocking(0), which makes the pipe reading non-blocking. Otherwise a deadlock occurs -- maybe because the read command blocks while waiting for 1k to be filled, but not sure.

Thank you,
Tibi