++ to you bastard. Problem solved. In my case (NT/Apache) I didn't need the nph OR the $|. Clearly I was pumping enough data that even the perl buffers got written. So if is a timing issue on the server, the $| = 1; is needed. In my case, I just wanted to make sure that if there was lots of data, it would begin to appear before it all arrived. Lesson learned: put enough data in the pipe to make a difference. Thanks again.