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Message: [QUOTE="Ben, post: 4745852"] There is no error message. system() returns zero, and $! is empty. But my command is definitely not running. Keep in mind that I *can* make it run just by using the usage form system("cmd","param","param",etc). It works fine, and the input is thoroughly laundered anyway, it can't really be fed anything from the perl script that would make it quietly go away without an error code. I've printed out the strings, which are entirely vanilla, and there is no difference, except of course I can't add the output redirection (>output.txt) or the detach (&) for the shell expansion that I can in the form: system("cmd param1 param2 >output.txt &"); ....which is what returns me the 0 and empty $!, yet does not invoke my command at all. Since I wrote my original cry for assistance, using a helpful hint here, I went to a fork and close streams approach. Although this does not give me the diagnostic output file (>output.txt) it does detach properly and so the main functionality I needed is there. If I need the output.txt file I can open it directly and use fprintf instead of printf to pump the messages out to it. So my problem has been worked around, but the reason system() is not working in this instance still eludes me. --Ben [/QUOTE]