here's a possible mechanism. At least on windows when used in this way the system() call won't block, it'll launch the command and the parent script continues on. The script returns immediately but if you watch your task manager the spawned perl process continues to run for 60 seconds.

This would seem an undocumented feature - I just glossed over perldoc for system & exec, and I don't see any mention of this behavior. But if the shoe fits ..... 

my $cmd = 'perl -e "sleep(60)"';
system(1, $cmd);
print "Done - but my subprocess is still running!\n";

[download]

In reply to Re: exec with cleanup by blueAdept
in thread exec with cleanup by bart

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.