i'm having some issues with subroutines being ran on a forked process. the subroutines have print statements which i would like to have printed to stdout in a format similar to: 
"\nthis is my message\n\n"

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however, the print format is not as controlled as it is when i do not fork. sometimes my command line is returned before the final print statement in the loop. i'll see my first three prints, and then my command line prompt, with the fourth print statement appearing after the prompt.

do i need a wait() statement? and if so, where? i'm not too familiar with the function. thanks -c

my code: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

  ## declare a pid for forking
  my $pid;

  ## loop through devices
  for my $node(@devices) {

    ## if child process exists, move to next device
    if ($pid = fork) {
      next;

    ## begin actions within the child process
    } elsif(defined($pid)) {

      ## print a message
      &log_action($node);

      ## explicit exit for child process
      exit;

    } else {

      die "Cant fork for some reason! : $!\n";

    ## endif
    }

  ## end of for loop
  }

sub log_action {

  my $i = shift;

  print "\nThis message if for node $i.\n\n";

}

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Edit by tye to remove tons of trailing spaces from lines

In reply to Understanding how to fork properly. by c

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