I was puzzled slightly by this bit in the pod:
(Note that while each case runs in a separate process, all of the repetitions of any one case are run together.)
Does that mean that the cases are run serially (as in the original Benchmark approach) -- that is, case #2 doesn't start until case #1 is finished?

That might be a dumb question, because I don't have any experience using a two-arg open where the second arg is "-|" -- perdoc -f open doesn't discuss this usage directly, and I must confess I'm baffled as to how you are actually making it work here. You might consider including a brief explanation (either as pod or as "#" comments in the code). (Update: thanks for the correction, simonm -- I had missed that part of the docs earlier.)

Anyway, I'm asking about serial-vs-concurrent execution because forking could allow multiple sub-processes to run simultaneously -- and even though they are independent processes, they will typically be sharing a single cpu, which means that the timing report that comes back could depend on the number of cases being tested.

Also, if the jobs are concurrent, this would place constraints on what the test code can do in terms of file i/o -- the user would have be careful to use different file names for each case (especially on output files, though using the same input file could throw off the stats due to low-level caching in the hardware or the OS).

Minor nit -- when I read the post, the second paragraph under "DESCRIPTION" in the pod ended with "In some cases" -- either you meant to finish the sentence or you meant to delete those three words (but you didn't do it yet).

In reply to Re: Forking Benchmarks? by graff
in thread Forking Benchmarks? by simonm

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