Maybe this node by abigail-II would interest you. forking code It is an easy to use forking method. Now you really have to look closely at them, they allow you to pass code references to the children. I don't see why you can't pass them different sub-routines to execute. Here is a sample, I hope this helps:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#For afork, the first argument is an array - a child will be 
#forked for each array element. The second argument indicates the maxi
+mum 
#number of children that may be alive at one time. The third argument 
+is a 
#code reference; this is the code that will be executed by the child. 
+One 
#argument will be given to this code fragment. For afork, the array el
+ement is 
#passed. Note that this code will assume no other children will be spa
+wned, 
#and that $SIG {CHLD} hasn't been set to IGNORE. 
#by Abigail 

if ($#ARGV < 0){@ARGV = qw( 1 2 3 4 5)}

afork (\@ARGV,10,\&hello);
print "Main says: All done now\n";

sub hello{
my $data = $_[0];
print "hello world from $data\n";}

################################################## 
sub afork (\@$&) {
my ($data, $max, $code) = @_;
my $c = 0;
foreach my $data (@$data) {
wait unless ++ $c <= $max;
die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
exit $code -> ($data) unless $pid;
}
1 until -1 == wait;
}
#####################################################
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