Not a great suggestion but you could do something like 
$SIG{__USR1__} = sub {
  open(my $f, ">/tmp/taskinfo");
  print $f "$$'s current task is $TASK\n";
  close($f);
}

[download]
then just make sure each process sets $TASK correctly and do 
> kill -USR1 12345
> cat /tmp/taskinfo
12345's current task is making breakfast

[download]

Could be dangerous on perls where signals are not safe (pre 5.8 I think)

In reply to Re: Suggestions on differentiating child processes by fergal
in thread Suggestions on differentiating child processes by gnu@perl

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