See Problems with IPC::Run module on Windows XP

IPC::Run is cross platform, although IPC::Open3 is usually easier on linux, as it uses pipes instead of IPC::Run's sockets. There are a few other

Thanks for this - very helpful. Unfortunately, turns out the program I'm interfacing with is expecting a (psuedo)tty.. is there any way to do this in Windows? (IPC::Run says "no".)

Glib is cross-platform, and here is a good example of using it with a Pty.

And yes, the pipe reading thru Glib's methods works on Win32.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

# by Phil Letschert on gtk2-perl maillist
#It is common behaviour that the C library uses isatty(3) to decide if
+ stdout
#is line-buffered or block-buffered. When reading from a pipe to an ex
+ternal
#command the output is block-buffered, which explains the reported beh
+aviour.
#Solution is using a pseudo-terminal and connect the watcher to it, fo
+llowing is
#a complete example:

use Glib;
use IO::Pty;

my $pty = IO::Pty->new;
my $cmd = "top -d .5";
my $pid;

unless ($pid = fork) {  # child process
        die "problem spawning program: $!\n" unless defined $pid;

        use POSIX ();
        POSIX::setsid
            or die "setsid failed: $!";

        my $tty = $pty->slave;
        my $tty_fd = $tty->fileno;
 
        open STDIN, "<&$tty_fd" or die $!;
        open STDOUT, ">&$tty_fd" or die $!;
        open STDERR, ">&STDOUT" or die $!;
        close $pty;
        close $tty;

        exec $cmd;
}

my $main_loop = Glib::MainLoop->new;

my $watcher;
$watcher = Glib::IO->add_watch( fileno( $pty ), ['in', 'hup'], \&callb
+ack);

$main_loop->run;

sub callback {
    if ( $pty->eof ) {
            Gtk2::Helper->remove_watch( $watcher );
        close( $pty );
    }
    else {
        my $line = $pty->getline;
        print $line;
    }
}
[download]

If you need to read and write to it, look at this usage: (only quickly tested :-) )

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Glib;
use IO::Pty;

my $pty = IO::Pty->new;
my $cmd = "top";
my $pid;

unless ($pid = fork) {  # child process
        die "problem spawning program: $!\n" unless defined $pid;

        use POSIX ();
        POSIX::setsid
            or die "setsid failed: $!";

        my $tty = $pty->slave;
        my $tty_fd = $tty->fileno;
 
        open STDIN, "<&$tty_fd" or die $!;
        open STDOUT, ">&$tty_fd" or die $!;
        open STDERR, ">&STDOUT" or die $!;

        exec $cmd;
}

my $main_loop = Glib::MainLoop->new;

my $watcher;
$watcher = Glib::IO->add_watch( fileno( $pty ), ['in', 'hup'], \&callb
+ack);

syswrite( $pty, 'l',16);
syswrite( $pty, "\n",16);
syswrite( $pty, 't',16);
syswrite( $pty, "\n",16);
syswrite( $pty, 'm',16);
syswrite( $pty, "\n",16);

$main_loop->run;

sub callback {
    if ( $pty->eof ) {
            Gtk2::Helper->remove_watch( $watcher );
        close( $pty );
    }
    else {
        my $line = $pty->getline;
        print $line;
    }
}
[download]

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