I run it on Windows 2000.

Hence my comment about your not specifying which OS you were attempting this on. It is known that fork() doesn't always play nice on Windows.

Suggest you look at the solution proposed by brer flyingmoose here. In order to do the exit that you ask for replace his line that says $proc->wait(); with exit(0); and you should be OK.

DISCLAIMER: Don't have a Windows 2000 box to test this on so do your own testing

cowdawg: I'm going to remove the line regarding the wait. Good catch.

I run it on Windows 2000.

Then you could use the Win32::Job module, standard with ActivePerl 5.8. For example:

use strict;
use Win32::Job;

my @cmds = (
  [ "netstat", 'netstat -na'                                      ],
  [ $^X,       'perl -le "print\"pid=$$:Sleep 5 secs.\";sleep 5"' ],
);

my $job = Win32::Job->new();
my @pids; my $i = 0;
for my $cmd (@cmds) {
  ++$i;
  my $pid = $job->spawn($cmd->[0], $cmd->[1],
  { stdin => 'NUL', stdout => "$i.out", stderr => "$i.err" } )
     or die "spawn: $^E";
  push(@pids, $pid);
}
print "Processes pids: @pids are running...\n";
$job->run(60);    # allow up to 60 seconds for all processes to end
print "Job complete (output in files 1.out/1.err/2.out/2.err).\n";
my $stat = $job->status();
for my $pid (@pids) {
  exists($stat->{$pid}) or die "oops, no status for $pid";
  my $rc = $stat->{$pid}->{exitcode};
  my $t  = $stat->{$pid}->{time};
  print "pid=$pid, rc=$rc, elapsed time=$t->{elapsed} secs\n";
}
[download]

Update: Sorry, on re-reading your question, I don't think Win32::Jobs will help you. I suggest you simply launch the processes using Win32::Process (also standard with ActivePerl) and exit.

use strict;
use Win32::Process;
my $SysDir = "$ENV{SystemRoot}\\system32";
my @cmds = (
  [ "$SysDir\\netstat.exe", 'netstat -na'                         ],
  [ $^X,       'perl -le "print\"pid=$$:Sleep 5 secs.\";sleep 5"' ],
);
for my $cmd (@cmds) {
   Win32::Process::Create(my $hProc,              # process object
                          $cmd->[0],              # executable
                          $cmd->[1],              # command line
                          1,                      # inherit handles
                          NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,  # priority
                          '.')                    # working dir
      or die "error create process: $^E\n";
  my $pid = $hProc->GetProcessID();
  print "Process pid $pid launched.\n";
}
print "I'm outta here.\n";
[download]