ikegami and ww, thanks for the responses. There is no particularly urgent reason to direct the Java app's output to a command window. The reason I wanted to do it that way is because, before I wrote the Perl script, that is how I have been working with the application. That is, for the most part, I have access to the server machine. To start my Java app, I double-click the batch file. This launches a command window where I can view output and kill the app by simply closing the window. (Your guess that the console output is disposable is correct. Anything of worth is logged using logback.) I've developed the Perl script for the case where I only have remote access to the server machine. In that case, it would be nice if the Java app launched as it normally does, within a command window. That way, if someone else launches the app remotely while I'm at the server machine, I can see the output immediately and also easily kill the Java app if need be.

From the looks of it, this is not an easy problem to solve and it sounds like I'm better off imagining a different setup, e.g. the console output goes to a file and I kill the server with either a batch file or simply by accessing the Task Manager. By the way, can't I just as easily direct the console output to a file like this?

system('run.bat > console.log');
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Thanks,

David

As long as every program started by run.bat just writes to STDOUT and STDERR, you can even use a "pipe open" and read the output directly, without messing with temporary files and without fighting the race conditions that come with them:

open my $pipe,'run.bat |' or die "Ooops: $!";
while (my $line=<$pipe>) {
    print $line; # <-- stupid example
}
close $pipe;
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Note that this example catches only STDOUT, not STDERR. If you want both in ONE stream (that may become very hard to "unmix"), use output redirection:

open my $pipe,'run.bat 2>&1 |' or die "Ooops: $!"; 
# ...
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If you want only STDERR, use that, plus get rid of STDOUT (write to the null device, i.e. NUL on DOS/Win, /dev/null on Unix):

open my $pipe,'run.bat 2>&1 >nul |' or die "Ooops: $!"; 
# ...
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If you want both streams separately, use IPC::Open3 or similar.

Also note that you probably don't need the wrapping batch file, you can also start the java runtime executable directly, typically java.exe -jar jarfile.jar arg1 arg2:

open my $pipe,'java.exe -jar jarfile.jar arg1 arg2 |' or die "Ooops: $
+!";
# ...
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Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

Alexander, thanks for the detailed response! I'm new to Perl so all that info was very useful as well as well-detailed.

David