pdflatex and system

[josera]

Hello:
I've made a program in Perl with the output in latex. Now i want to generate the pdf file with pdflatex. I'm using windows, so i've installed miktex in the folder of my project.
When i call system with

system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex")

all is ok, and i obtain my file $outputfile.pdf, but i think that itsn't elegant to show in the standard output, so i change the call, changing the standard output (or the standard error), to

system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex > $outputfile
+.2.log")

or

system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex >? $outputfil
+e.2.log")

but then my program says:

"'.' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file."

What's the problem? Why doesn't it work?
I've got a paar question more about system, when the program invoked finish, my program takes the control again. Doesn't it? Can the program invoked not to finish good and be a "zombi" in the system and not finish?
Can someone help me? Thank you.
Yours, sincerely
José Ramón Martínez

Edit g0n - added code tags

[holli]

try

system ("./lib/texmf/miktex/bin/pdflatex $outputfile.tex>$outputfile.2
+.log")

(note: no spaces around ">").

For asynchronous execution of an external command, check out exec() fork() or Win32::Process.

Update: bart corrected my error about exec().

[jeteve]

See also IPC::Run on CPAN, it can simplify what you trying to do :) Hope it helps !