EXIT CODE 255

marlboroguy58 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

hi, i have a script which extracts data from a flat file, formats it and populates that data into an Excel sheet. I noticed that if the flat file is small, the script runs and exits with code 0, but if there is a lot of data the same script populates some part of the data and exits with code 255. i m not a perl expert, but think that the perl.exe is losing the CPU time and hence exiting...not sure.. i m using windows XP professional. once i run the script there will be 2 processes running perl.exe EXCEL.exe as soon i run the script i set the priority of the perl.exe process to "real time", the script runs succesfully, but with the default priority it exits with code 255. how do i prevent the script from coming out...is there a way i can set the priority of the script from within the script..

Comment on EXIT CODE 255

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Re: EXIT CODE 255 by roboticus (Chancellor) on Mar 30, 2007 at 11:53 UTC
marlboroguy58: I just did a quick google, and found that you should be able to control the priority of tasks by using this command to start them: `start /belownormal program.exe` [download] I found this at http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/windows/win2k/win2kprocess.html. ...roboticus	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: EXIT CODE 255 by Moron (Curate) on Mar 30, 2007 at 12:05 UTC
Reviewing this, I suggest a couple of minor modifications to meet the OP requirements: `start /realtime perl theprogram.pl` [download] -M Free your mind	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: EXIT CODE 255 by roboticus (Chancellor) on Mar 31, 2007 at 13:04 UTC
Moron: Ha, ha! That's quite correct++. When I read the original post (OP), it made me start the google search because I have a similar problem. So my response answers my problem rather than the question in the OP. Thanks for the catch, Moron. ...roboticus	[reply]
Re: EXIT CODE 255 by sgifford (Prior) on Mar 30, 2007 at 15:14 UTC
The priority of the process shouldn't cause it to exit, unless there's some time limit in the program. To figure out why it's existing, try running it from a command shell, and see if it prints a helpful error message before exiting. If that doesn't help, try adding error messages in the various places that it exits, adding debugging messages in the code, and/or running it under the debugger. Good luck! -- sgifford's Web page	[reply]