fork
fork - create a new process just like this one
fork
Does a fork(2) system call. Returns the child pid to the parent process
and 0 to the child process, or
undef
if the fork is unsuccessful.
Note: unflushed buffers remain unflushed in both processes, which means
you may need to set
$|
($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the
autoflush()
FileHandle method to avoid duplicate output.
If you
fork()
without ever waiting on your children, you will accumulate
zombies:
<![CDATA[
$SIG{CHLD} = sub { wait };
]]>
There's also the double-fork trick (error checking on
fork()
returns omitted);
<![CDATA[
unless ($pid = fork) {
unless (fork) {
exec "what you really wanna do";
die "no exec";
# ... or ...
## (some_perl_code_here)
exit 0;
}
exit 0;
}
waitpid($pid,0);
]]>
See also
the perlipc manpage
for more examples of forking and reaping
moribund children.