Have you investigated the various flavours of *nix utils for Windows out there? A quick search turned up some Q&As on StackOverflow regarding "tail" for Windows....

[QUOTE=schickel;308305]Have you investigated the various flavours of *nix utils for Windows out there? A quick search turned up some Q&As on StackOverflow regarding "tail" for Windows....[/QUOTE]

Yeah... My rant had to do with the fact that WinBlows doesn't include the command-line command "tail" by default. A fundamental command for anyone serious.

Anyone can install cygwin (for example) and get the tail command in the shell. But come on, why is this not available under the "Power Shell" which now allows "ls"? The power shell was supposed to show that Microsoft was serious about power users.

At the end of the day my opinion remains that M$ is a toy operating system -- meant for those who are not serious, but have a lot of money to spend....

[QUOTE=chalsall;308307]
At the end of the day my opinion remains that M$ is a toy operating system -- meant for those who are not serious, but have a lot of money to spend....[/QUOTE]

Until Adobe puts out a 'nix version of Photoshop I'm locked into Windows. I can't afford a Mac of similar power to my PC.

Still, I have plenty of frustrations with Windows going way back.:bangheadonwall::rakes:

[QUOTE=kladner;308312]Until Adobe puts out a 'nix version of Photoshop I'm locked into Windows. I can't afford a Mac of similar power to my PC.[/QUOTE]

Yeah. I hear you loud and clear. I have several clients in a similar situation.

The ironic thing is MacOS is actually based on an Open Source Unix-like kernel. Apple spent a bit of time and money writing a flashy UI, but the core is Unix.

There is no technical reason why Adobe couldn't make their software available for Linux. If they use the excuse "there are so many distributions to choose from", the answer is "Choose one -- Ubuntu would be fine".

Want to bet when this will happen?

[QUOTE=chalsall;308307]Yeah... My rant had to do with the fact that WinBlows doesn't include the command-line command "tail" by default. A fundamental command for anyone serious.[/quote]What I was thinking was finding the best/easiest of the publicly available stand alones out there, then you could either include it in the distribution of the future mfakt* Windows packages or make it available on the download page.

[QUOTE=schickel;308316]What I was thinking was finding the best/easiest of the publicly available stand alones out there, then you could either include it in the distribution of the future mfakt* Windows packages or make it available on the download page.[/QUOTE]

I don't need "tail" for my spider. That was just a tangential rant.

I want a fork() function which works no matter what version of Perl anyone has installed in any environment the Perl code finds itself.

I don't think that a small amount of code should come with a huge amount of baggage. Please forgive me, but in the Unix world it is possible to share a few lines of Perl which works without having to include an installer which downloads MBs of supporting libraries just to run.

[QUOTE=chalsall;308315]Yeah. I hear you loud and clear. I have several clients in a similar situation.

The ironic thing is MacOS is actually based on an Open Source Unix-like kernel. Apple spent a bit of time and money writing a flashy UI, but the core is Unix.

There is no technical reason why Adobe couldn't make their software available for Linux. If they use the excuse "there are so many distributions to choose from", the answer is "Choose one -- Ubuntu would be fine".

Want to bet when this will happen?[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't bet on it, but I would venture that it might happen about the same time that the waters around Barbados freeze a meter deep.:razz:

[QUOTE=kladner;308312]Until Adobe puts out a 'nix version of Photoshop I'm locked into Windows. I can't afford a Mac of similar power to my PC.

Still, I have plenty of frustrations with Windows going way back.:bangheadonwall::rakes:[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.gimp.org/"]GIMP[/URL] or [URL="http://inkscape.org/"]Inkscape[/URL]

[QUOTE=chalsall;308319]I don't need "tail" for my spider. That was just a tangential rant.

I want a fork() function which works no matter what version of Perl anyone has installed in any environment the Perl code finds itself.

I don't think that a small amount of code should come with a huge amount of baggage. Please forgive me, but in the Unix world it is possible to share a few lines of Perl which works without having to include an installer which downloads MBs of supporting libraries just to run.[/QUOTE]Sorry, I was obviously concentrating on the wrong issue there.

Getting back to something LaurV said about START, the answers are 1) no, not from the command line, and 2) limited control; yes, XP or higher has TASKKILL, which can kill other processes from the command line; and no, not when starting from a CMD box.

START spawns processes off and turns them loose; GUI programs open normally, console programs open with an independent console (CMD) window.

Unfortunately, if you want to get down as close as controlling the in/out pipes of a console program, you need to write to the Win32/64 API.

[SIZE="1"]Either that, or develop a GUI version of the various programs where the MBs of supporting libraries are already there deep in the bowels of the Windows installation.....[/SIZE]

[QUOTE=schickel;308340]Unfortunately, if you want to get down as close as controlling the in/out pipes of a console program, you need to write to the Win32/64 API.[/QUOTE]

Sigh... Thanks schickel. That was what I was afraid of.

Kinda strange that getting "down and dirty" and reading/writing the in/out/error pipes of a console program under Windows would be so very difficult.

We do this kind of thing every day under Unix, and we don't even really think about it....

[QUOTE=chalsall;308344]Sigh... Thanks schickel. That was what I was afraid of.

Kinda strange that getting "down and dirty" and reading/writing the in/out/error pipes of a console program under Windows would be so very difficult.

We do this kind of thing every day under Unix, and we don't even really think about it....[/QUOTE]Unfortunately it's not really that hard [i]if you write it in non-portable C/C++ code[/i]. So for a portable Perl-based solution, that's not really an option.