watch dem wheels turn

Just what good are those going to do?

The $? is the same as the pid returned by open2.

$^E is a system-wide variable which can be set by any program running in the system (I'm on Windows remeber?). It's value is persistent across processes until somebody sets it to a new value (by causing some error). I cannot rely on that to check wether the call to open2 succeded or not. Also, $^E is never "reseted" or "unseted".

The reality is that if open2 failes, no exception will be thrown and there is no way check for failure (until I actually try to read/write on those pipes, of course).

The $? is the same as the pid returned by open2.

So what? According to the docs (perlvar, etc) it should have the info you need.

$^E is not system wide and you can set it to whatever you want whenever

E:\>perl -le"warn $^E;$^E=1;warn $^E;undef $^E;die $^E"
Warning: something's wrong at -e line 1.
Incorrect function at -e line 1.
Died at -e line 1.
[download]

You can always try your hand at IPC::Run3. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.