I suggest you try using some other command

Yes, when I first posted I was under the (mistaken) impression that *all* commands would hang. Just now, I'm starting to look at other commands - some of which hang, some of which don't.

On my MinGW-built perl, a command of 'gcc -v' hangs, but 'gcc -o test.exe test.c' doesn't hang, and the executable gets built.

Even on my VC7-built perl, a command of 'cl -o try.exe try.c /nologo' seems to work fine - which is surprising as that command is very similar to the command in 00_ptr_cast.t that *does* hang.
00_ptr_cast.t can be viewed here for anyone who wants to take a look at it.

Cheers,
Rob