Update: If signal selection is the real problem as merlyn and dws are pointing out, the below code might be overkill or just totally off the mark.

On *nix, you might be able to use setpgrp() to send a kill signal to the process group, not just the forked process 

   ## pseudocode, so won't do any good as it is
   if( $i_am_the_child ) {
      setpgrp();
      `some_cmd`;
   } else {
      ## parent
      sleep $sleepamt;

      ## I think 15 is SIGTERM. please confirm on
      ## on your system
      kill -15, getpgrp( $child_pid );
   }

[download]

While I think the above idiom is correct, I suggest you read perldoc -f kill and setpgrp to make sure that that's what you want... ;)

In reply to Re: Killing a Forked Subprocess by lestrrat
in thread Killing a Forked Subprocess by Super Monkey

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