I remember that I got once quite confused by this, but sometimes Perl (and DOS :)) buffer output for a complete line or a certain size. Setting autoflush (I think it's $|) for output by using 
  $| = 1;

[download]
does this (but I don't know if it applies).

In reply to Sometimes there is text held in the output buffer by Corion
in thread Forking and waiting by Silas

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