Emacs isn't so much "frozen" as it is "waiting for the perl script to finish". If you just want to run the script in the background, put a " &" at the end of the command string.
On Wednesday, September 21, 2011, Mart Zirnask <martzirnask@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everybody, > > Probably an issue not very complicated: when I try to launch an
> external Perl script ("tags#.pl") from Emacs, providing it with the > current buffer name, the editor freezes. > > I'm on Windows and here's what I have in my .emacs: > > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> ;; Perl tagcloud > (global-set-key (kbd "<f2>") > (lambda () > (interactive) > (shell-command (concat "perl
> ~/.emacs.d/tags#.pl " buffer-file-name)))) > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > I'm not a programmer and I started using Emacs for text editing only
> recently. What's wrong? > > Thanks for any help, > best, > Mart Zirnask, > from Estonia > >