When a program forks the fork returns the pid of the child so the parent can use this to kill it at will. 

my $pid = fork();
if ( $pid == 0 ) {
    # child process so do stuff here
    # usually have an exit to ensure child 
    # does not escape this if clause
  exit;
}
else {
    # parent process, waits a while
    sleep 60
    # kills child
    kill 9, $pid;
}

# parent continues on here (as will child if not killed or exited)

[download]

You seem somewhat confused about forking. The parent is the whole program. It spawns children and continues. The child is a whole copy of the program and gets copies of all the data/handles to that point.

There is a vast quantity of discussion about fork on PM - you can find it using Super Search

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

In reply to Re: Killing Parents and Children by tachyon
in thread Killing Parents and Children by Gorby

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