A few months ago, I found out (from here) that one could say:
system 1,"some junky windows command";
and windows would "execute" it in the background. Now I've found out that "not quite". It seems that it gets scheduled, and doesn't start until your current program (the perl script) is done. This is mostly OK, but I want to establish a socket connection to the program, and it isn't there until I do something. My question: how do I pause my program (perl script) and let the other thing (a gui goodie I can control) take off. It seems that this varies between W2K and WXP, or other variables.
I've tried "sleep...", and a "poll..." to no avail. Does anyone have suggestions. Thanks.
Also: where is the 1, part of the system command used on windows described. A pointer??