Unless you are running on a multiprocessor box or a cluster, 'parallel' really just means multiprocessing. If you fork coprocesses, they can get their own time slice whenever they are ready to run, so your job effectively gets more time from the system.

Parallel::ForkManager is very convenient for that sort of thing. The GPL and Artistic licenses both encourage redistribution under sane terms.

(Added): Threads are another possibility, but they do not gain you time slices on *nix. They're mainly useful if the parallelized routines are I/O bound.

Perl 5.003 is terribly old. There were no threads then. On the brighter side, fork is fine for SMP and other multiple CPU systems, and will do true parallel processing for the kids.

After Compline,
Zaxo

In reply to Re: How do I run subroutines in parallel? by Zaxo
in thread How do I run subroutines in parallel? by Anonymous Monk

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