One way to start a process asynchronously is to use system() with an initial argument of 1:

    if ($^O eq "MSWin32") {
        system(1, "cmd_to_run arguments");
    }
    else {
        # do fork and exec, or use system("cmd_to_run arguments &");
    }
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By George your right!

I tried fork and exec, but it just waits for the long process using the win32 Apache. system(1,cmd_to_run) works fine as will system(nohup cmd_to_run &) for the unix version.

I considered using a trigger file and a separate process, but I prefer a self contained set of scripts.

I'm forever in your debt.

Sorry, I am new here but I have played with perl quite a bit. Here is some code I came up with to spawn processes using fork. It works and it seems quite simple...

my $kidpid          = 0;
my $jobs_to_fork    = 3;
my $i_am_the_master = 0;

my $samps   = 0;
my $last_no = 10;
my $i       = 0;

for ($i = 1; $i <= $jobs_to_fork; $i++) {
    $kidpid = fork_me($kidpid);
    print "$i. kidpid:$kidpid\n";
}

if ($kidpid == 0) {
    $i_am_the_master = 1;
} else {
    $i_am_the_master = 0;
}
sleep (3);
if ($i_am_the_master) {
    print "I will look after my children\n";
} else {
    printf ("I am a child %6d running the program.\n", $kidpid);
    while ($samps < 1000000) {
    $rnd_no = int(rand($last_no+1));
    $samps++;
    $total = $total+$rnd_no;
    }
    printf ("%6d: %d %f\n", $kidpid, $samps, ($total / $samps));
}

sub fork_me {
    my $kpid = $_[0];
    
    if ($kpid == 0) {
    $kpid = fork(); # the master perserves himself and start another t
+hread
    }
    return($kpid); # the child sill just return to go do his job
}
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