From: "Simon Kröger" <SimonKroeger@...>
Date: 2005-09-10T05:18:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem with popen on windows

stevetuckner wrote:
 > [...]
> Below was my attempt to say, here is how you should fix this issue. And 
> then it didn't work. If I run it with ruby it works fine. When I run it 
> with rubyw, it just goes away when I click run. Any ideas anyone? The 
> system code and `` code is taken from the list a long time ago.
> 
> Steve Tuckner
> [...cool code...]

 From the msdn library:

Note   The _popen function returns an invalid file handle, if used in a 
Windows program, that will cause the program to hang indefinitely. 
_popen works properly in a Console application. To create a Windows 
application that redirects input and output, read the section "Creating 
a Child Process with Redirected Input and Output" in the Win32 SDK.

hmmm ... i will read through the mentioned section ....
(it's not 100% clear to me if this means "don't start a windows program 
with popen" or "don't start any program from a windows program" - it 
would make kind of sense if redirecting stdin from a program without 
stdin would fail)

btw: on my computers (XP-Home) nothing 'goes away' but the cmd.exe 
window flickers as if ruby's popen would be used - strange.

 From the msdn again:

..and asynchronously executes a spawned copy of the command processor..

this is the main problem i guess.

cheers

Simon