#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $pid = fork();

my $doing_something = 1;

while ( $doing_something ) {

    if ( $pid == 0 ) { # we're the child
        do_time_function();
        sleep 10;
    }
}
    print "I'm the parent, and I can do other stuff " .
          "while the child is waiting to update the " .
          "time stamp...\n";


sub do_time_function {

    print "blah, timestamp updated\n";