File Locked after Close?

Hi,

I'm doing the following:

open FILE, '<file.dat' || die '...';
# Do something with FILE
close FILE;
system 'command file.dat'; # This fails

The last line fails even though I closed FILE.  However, if I break
out the last line into a separate script that is run later, it runs
fine.  Therefore, it looks like there is some kind of lock that is
left on FILE even though I closed it.

If I open another file with the same handle, then everything works.
For instance:

open FILE, '<file.dat' || die '...';
# Do something with FILE
close FILE;
open FILE, 'another.dat' || die '...';
system 'command file.dat'; # This works

Unfortunately this is too awkard, so I would like to avoid it.  Any
ideas on what may be happening or a more elegant way to ensure the
problem (lock?) doesn't occur?  If it helps, I'm using an older build
of ActiveState Perl (sorry, don't recall the version) on a WinXP
system, running in a DOS shell.


Thanks!