Quick solution using fork and exec.
my $program = '/bin/ls';
my $num_children = 5;

$SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';

for (1..$num_children) {
   defined ( my $pid = fork ) or die "Can not fork!";
   if (!$pid) {
      # in child process
      exec $program;
   }
}

[download]
Update: fixed the logical bug with fork, if fork returns pid of 0 (parent) the code would die too. undef and 0 both evaluates to false. Thanks to borisz to point out below. Zaxo is right too. ;-)

In reply to Re: Launching multiple processes by Roger
in thread Launching multiple processes by JeffR100

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