in reply to Don't want to wait

There are two ways of doing this that I can think of:
  1. Use system, and add an ampersand at the end, like this: 
    system("command &");

    [download]
    system uses a shell to execute the command, so it will correctly recognize the ampersand and put the code in the background. The disadvantages of this approach are that an extra process (the shell) gets executed, and that shell meta-character interpretation is done (this could also be considered an advantage, but it opens potential security concerns). The advantage is that it's easy to do.
  2. Use fork and exec, something like this: 
    my $pid;
if (defined ($pid=fork)) {
  if (!$pid) {
    # Execute command in the child
    exec ("command");
    # If it returns, there was an error
    die "Error executing command: $!\n";
  }
  # The parent continues unaffected, falls of the if stmt
}
else {
  die "Error in fork: $!\n";
}

    [download]
    This has the advantages that it is more efficient (just your two processes are started) and that no shell metacharacters are interpreted (again, this could be a disadvantage depending on what you need). The slight disadvantage is that it's more complex to code.

    --ZZamboni

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