foreach my $node ( @devices ) {
    if( $do_fork ) {
        my $pid = fork();
        if( !$pid ) {
            do_exciting_things();
            exit 0;
        }
    } else {
        do_exciting_things();
    }
}
[download]

looks very much like my most recent rewrite after starting this thread, so i am very encouraged that I am actually starting to understand what it is you dudes actually are talking about :-)

maybe though you could clear up the fog for me on this:

use POSIX;
my $do_fork = 1;
$SIG{CHLD} = sub {
    while( ( my $pid = waitpid(-1, POSIX::WNOHANG()) ) > 0 ){
        ...
    }
}
[download]

this one has me scratching my head. if you'd rather point to a perldoc reference, i'm up for that as well. it looks as though you're defining a subroutine as a hash value, but i'm not certain where/how its being called.

thanks -c