Date:         Fri, 14 Mar 2003 16:57:34 -0800
Reply-To:     cassell.david@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "David L. Cassell" <cassell.david@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV>
Subject:      Re: exec win2k resource utilities
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Huck <huck@FINN.NOSPAM.COM> replied informedly:
> there is a discussion going on over in comp.lang.perl.moderated about
> this, the thread titled "Win32: Ways of redirecting STDOUT and STDERR
> of external pgm at the same time?"
>
> one repsonder "Louis Erickson" suggested
>
> >$rc = system("program > foo.txt 2>&1");
> >
> >You'll have to make sure buffering doesn't bite you there, but that
> >does what you want.  It looks just like how you'd do it under Unix.
> >Works in Windows 2000 and anything newer, and probably in NT4.  Can't
> >speak for 98/ME, etc.  I suspect they don't work.

If *all* the relevant output for our original poster is coming from
stderr, the buffering is probably not an issue.  Alternatively,
telling Perl to set

    $|=1;

might suffice.  This is the output autoflush (default is 0, buffering
for stdout).

Since there is a potential problem with this approach on some windows
OSsa, it may be better within Perl to go ahead and open up a filehandle
for stderr and read it explicitly, tossing it afterward at stdout via
the print() function.

HTH,
David
--
David Cassell, CSC
Cassell.David@epa.gov
Senior computing specialist
mathematical statistician