This snippet shows how to (properly) fork() in Perl. Don't forget to use wait() to collect your children after they're done...

Update:: Thanks to Coruscate for catching the runaway $

use strict;
use warnings;
 
use constant FORK_WAIT => 2;
use constant MAX_ATTEMPTS => 10;
our $attempt = 0;
 
my $pid = undef;
 
while (not defined ($pid = fork())) {
    die "Too many failed fork() attempts: $!\n"
        if ++$attempt > MAX_ATTEMPTS;
    warn "fork() failed: $!\n";
    sleep FORK_WAIT;
}
 
if ($pid) {
 
# I'm the father
 
} else {
 
 # I'm the son
 
}

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In reply to Safe fork() construct by fokat

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