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jdporter has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: ⭐ (gui programming)

When I launch a Perl script on Windows, there's a console window that gets started too. How can I make this go away, or not get created in the first place?

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

  • Comment on How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?

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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?⭐
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 13, 2006 at 15:10 UTC
    Use Win32::GUI and the following lines: 
      use Win32::GUI;
  my $hw = Win32::GUI::GetPerlWindow();
  Win32::GUI::Hide($hw);

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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?⭐
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 13, 2006 at 15:12 UTC
    Use Win32::API. The following code does exactly what Win32::GUI does. 
    use Win32::API 0.20;

# just for completeness...
use constant SW_HIDE => 0;
use constant SW_SHOWNORMAL => 1;

# the API we need
my $GetConsoleTitle = new Win32::API('kernel32', 'GetConsoleTitle', 'P
+N', 'N');
my $SetConsoleTitle = new Win32::API('kernel32', 'SetConsoleTitle', 'P
+', 'N');
my $FindWindow = new Win32::API('user32', 'FindWindow', 'PP', 'N');
my $ShowWindow = new Win32::API('user32', 'ShowWindow', 'NN', 'N');

# save the current console title
my $old_title = " " x 1024;
$GetConsoleTitle->Call( $old_title, 1024 );

# build up a new (fake) title
my $title = "PERL-$$-".Win32::GetTickCount();

# sets our string as the console title
$SetConsoleTitle->Call( $title );

# sleep 40 milliseconds to let Windows rename the window
Win32::Sleep(40);

# find the window by title
$hw = $FindWindow->Call( 0, $title );

# restore the old title
$SetConsoleTitle->Call( $old_title );

# hide the console!
$ShowWindow->Call( $hw, SW_HIDE );

# sleep one second, then show the console again

sleep(1);
$ShowWindow->Call( $hw, SW_SHOWNORMAL );

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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?⭐
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 13, 2006 at 15:09 UTC
    If you're using ActivePerl, use wperl.exe to run your script. This is a copy of perl.exe that just doesn't create a console window at all. Since you won't have STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR, you won't be able to catch errors. Therefore be sure your script is totally bulletproof before calling it with wperl.exe.

    More info about this method is available.

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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?⭐
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 13, 2006 at 15:15 UTC
    Using Win32::Process::Create, You could have a "starter" script which launches your script as a detached process: 
    Win32::Process::Create( $Obj,
  "$perl_path/perl.exe",
  "perl test.pl",
  0, DETACHED_PROCESS,
  "$hs_path/scripts"
) or die ErrorReport();

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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?⭐
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 13, 2006 at 15:19 UTC
    The following technique is useful when the window you want to hide isn't the one you're interacting with. You can see the program's console output if you run it from a command prompt; but if you launch the script from Explorer (double-click; Start>Run, etc.), this hides the window. 
    use Win32::API;

sub hide_console
{
    Win32::API->new( 'kernel32', 'FreeConsole', [], 'I' )->Call();
}

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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?⭐
by jdporter (Paladin) on Mar 13, 2006 at 15:21 UTC
    You can create a standalone .exe file using PerlApp (from ActiveState's PDK) and use the -gui option which will suppress the DOS window on program startup.
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Re: How to hide/inhibit the console window when launching a Perl script on Windows?
by jdporter (Paladin) on Oct 31, 2006 at 17:37 UTC

    If you want to stop console windows from popping up when you call commands with backticks, try adding the following block to your script: 

    BEGIN
{
    Win32::SetChildShowWindow(0) 
        if defined &Win32::SetChildShowWindow;
}

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    This answer was taken from ActiveState's Perl FAQ, and was pointed out by Eradicatore in supressing console with perl2exe and backticks.

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