You want to be able to:

1. Run several external commands concurrently.
2. Check the output from those commands for some keyword(s).
3. (Optionally?) Have the outputs end up in files. (or is this just so you can search the output later?).
4. Have the script that starts the concurrent processes know:
   1. when the tasks completed.
   2. Whether the output contained the keyword(s).

threads and the 'piped' version of open (see perlopentut) makes this kind of concurrency easy.

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use threads qw[ async ];
use threads::shared;

sub runAndCheck {
    my( $cmd, $lookFor, $file, $checkRef, $doneRef ) = @_;
    open OUT, '>', $file or die "$file : $!";
    open CMD, "$cmd |" or die "$cmd : $!";
    while ( <CMD> ) {
        $$checkRef = 1 if $_ =~ $lookFor;
        print OUT;
    }
    close CMD;
    close OUT;
    $$doneRef = 1;
}

my @cmds = map{ "dir $_" } qw[ c:\ P:\test r:\ d:\ ];
my @checks : shared = ( 0 ) x @cmds;
my @dones  : shared = ( 0 ) x @cmds;
my $lookFor = 'junk.htm';

async{ 
    runAndCheck( 
        $cmds[ $_ ],
        $lookFor,
        "test$_.out",
        \$checks[ $_ ],
        \$dones[ $_ ]
    );
}->detach for 0 .. $#cmds;

while( grep( $_, @dones ) < @cmds ) {
    sleep 1;
    for ( 0 .. $#cmds ) {
        if( $dones[ $_ ] == 1 ) {
            printf "'$cmds[ $_ ]' completed; '$lookFor' ";
            print $checks[ $_ ] ? 'was found' : 'was not found';
            $dones[ $_ ] = 2;
        }
    }
}

__END__
P:\test>412014
'dir c:\' completed; 'junk.htm' was not found
'dir P:\test' completed; 'junk.htm' was found
'dir r:\' completed; 'junk.htm' was not found
'dir d:\' completed; 'junk.htm' was not found

P:\test>412014
'dir c:\' completed; 'junk.htm' was not found
'dir r:\' completed; 'junk.htm' was not found
'dir d:\' completed; 'junk.htm' was not found
'dir P:\/s' completed; 'junk.htm' was found
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