Another way to run applications instead of using exec or fork is to use expect; from the Expect module.
This is very useful for unruly programs that cause your Perl to hang.
I have also used open3 instead of fork / exec but am now currently converting open3 to expect. #Even though it only is available for linux it might be useful to you.

Everything I know is here
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Expect.pm/

Some code that uses this 


use Expect;


    my ($program_name, $login, $sourcefile) = @_;

    #spawn program_name using perl expect module
    my $exp = Expect->spawn($program_name,$login)
       or die "Cannot spawn $program_name $login: $!\n";

    #turn off output of results from stdout
    $exp->log_stdout(0);

    # wait for program_name to initialise
    $exp->expect(600,[ qr/Program ready to start/]);

    # send appropriate command to program_name
      $exp->send("run program_name $report_name $output_format $source
+file \n");
    

    # Wait for report to run or generate an error
    $exp->expect(600,[ qr/Error/i, sub { my $self = shift;
                           $self->send("quit\n");
                           print ("perl_program.pl has found an error:
+ $_ \n");
                           exp_continue; }],
    [ qr/Report run successful./i, sub { my $self = shift;
                           $self->send("quit\n");
                           exp_continue; }]);
}

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In reply to Re^3: problem with forking by chime
in thread problem with forking by sandeep.ses

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