hi jethro,

thank you for your valuable idea.my requirement is to run a command prompt.go to a particular directory and run a command.

during execution of this command i wait for a particular string to occur. the moment it occurs i will have to open a com port.the comport part is ready

now that i have changed @cat = qw(cmd). i get

"IPC::Run: timeout on timer #1 at C:/Perl/site/lib/IPC/Run.pm line 2932

please help me out