I'm trying to run the play command synchronously in one of my scripts. My code currently looks basically (well, exactly) like this:

exec 'play', $path unless fork();
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So I'm basically trying to fork off a child and have the child execute play and then exit. It works - the file is played synchronously and the main process (a Tk app) continues without the lag evident in the asynchronous version.

The trouble is that the play processes don't seem to exit. ps lists hundreds of instances of play running. There's no effect on my CPU, because each seems to be using 0% according to the GNOME process monitor. But it's still pretty annoying.

How can I get these children to exit when they've finished?

TIA, Bill Atkins