perlquestion danren924 I am new to Perl, so my problem may have a simple solution. I am running a Perl script that calls a Windows program using a command line. The command line parameters include source and results-destination file names. As the program processes the input file, I need to monitor a "percent complete" indicator, then close the Windows program, and return to the Perl script for post processing steps. I am presently using the "system()" command. However, since the Windows program does not routinely close at the end of its processing, the execution never returns to the script. If I manually close the Windows program, the post-processing steps of the script proceed as desired. How can I accomplish first calling a Windows program, then monitoring the program, then closing the program when processing is complete? Thanks for your help.