Is it possible to open Notepad and output results to it instead of saving it to a .txt file and having to open the file manually?

Let me interpolate what you are trying to do by what you have just said. My thinking is you could do this one of two ways: First would be some sort of funk-a-delic OLE set of calls which I am not privy to since I don't do windows.

The other way I'd approach the problem is as follows:

#  hand waving here... 
#
# No, I wouldn't really write a Perl script without use'ing strict. 
#      :-D 

open FOUT,"> myfile.txt" or die "myfile.txt:$!";

# do writes here 

close FOUT;

system("notepad.exe myfile.txt");


# untested code.  Please do not use this for anything 
# that could be potentially life threatening
# lest the fleas of a thousand camels infest your 
# armpits and drive you buggy.
[download]

What I'm driving at is at some point you should actually write the file and then use notepad to view it. What I'm not sure about, and the windows crowd can help here, is what happens to the notepad.exe process when the script exits.

Hope this is of some help...

perl -e "exec 'notepad file.txt'"

The difference between system() and exec() is NOT whether it pauses the script or not! system() will pause the script (unless used in one of a few special ways), exec() will start the notepad AND NEVER RETURN!

Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.

Try this:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Win32::GuiTest qw[ SendKeys ];
use Win32::Clipboard;

my $text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog\r\n" x 10;

my $clip = Win32::Clipboard();
$clip->Set( $text );
system 'start notepad.exe';
sleep 1;
SendKeys( '^v' );
[download]

Frankly, I'd discourage you from doing whatever it is you're trying to do with Perl and Microsoft Notepad. Control an inferior text editor from a superior text processing scripting language? Sounds kind of klunky.

Tell us what your real problem is and I'll bet someone can suggest a better approach to solving it than by using Perl to control Microsoft Notepad.

(I acknowledge I could be profoundly wrong and that the Perl/Notepad duo might be the perfect software pairing for your problem domain. But you've piqued my curiousity and I'd love to learn more—and to help if I can.)

Control an inferior text editor from a superior text processing scripting language?

I use this technique occasionally in CLI programs which require entering a fair amount of text: I generate a YAML or JSON file which prompts for the desired input, write it to a temporary file, then launch $ENV{EDITOR} || '/usr/bin/vi' to edit the file.

It works well for programs where I can assume users have the appropriate technical skills.

Fair enough. I can see a use case for popping open a text editor in the middle of CLI program.

It works well for programs where I can assume users have the appropriate technical skills.

In the Windows world, one can assume that users with "appropriate technical skills" will refuse to use Microsoft Notepad. ;-)

sendkeys is notorious even within a single application, so combining it with Perl may well be fraught, but this may get you started. If MessWord is on the machine, there is plenty of information on automating that and you won't need the dreaded sendkeys.

Regards,

John Davies

Update: there's no macro facility within Notepad, so I can't imagine how Win32::OLE would be able to automate it. Googling gets me no suggestions that don't involve sendkeys, so your choice may be sendkeys or using a more powerful application.