Have you thought about using "exec()" instead of "system()" to start whatever process is being run by the child? If the child is doing some setup stuff, running some single command line and exiting, then passing that command line to "exec()" will cause the the child process to be replaced by the exec'ed command. This means that the child's PID gets "taken over" by the exec'ed process, which also means that the PID returned to the parent by "fork" is the only one you need to worry about.

Of course, if anything needs to be done in the child after its sub-process finishes but before the child exits, then you wouldn't want to use "exec()" -- any code located after an "exec()" call is never reached (exec does not return to the caller).

In reply to Re: Possible waitpid problem - pid reuse? by graff
in thread Possible waitpid problem - pid reuse? by tsteiger

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.