Here is an example which may work for you, based on some snippets Abigail posted awhile ago. My example:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;

if ($#ARGV < 0){@ARGV = qw(a b c d)}

&afork (\@ARGV,4,\&mysub);

print "Main says: All done now\n";

sub mysub{
 my $x = $_[0];
 system "mkdir dir$x";
 chdir "dir$x"or die $!;
 for ($i=1;$i<10;$i++) {
 system "touch $i-$x";
 # open3(OUTPUT, INPUT, ERRORS, cd dir$x;make clean; make all);   
 #<code to process the output of the make commands and store into log 
+files> 
}
}

################################################## 
sub afork (\@$&) {
my ($data, $max, $code) = @_;
my $c = 0;
foreach my $data (@$data) {
wait unless ++ $c <= $max;
die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
exit $code -> ($data) unless $pid;
}
1 until -1 == wait;
}
#####################################################
[download]

The original old post from Abigail

#!/usr/bin/perl

#by Abigail of perlmonks.org 
#Some times you have a need to fork of several children, but you want 
+to 
#limit the maximum number of children that are alive at one time. Here
+ 
#are two little subroutines that might help you, mfork and afork. They
+ are very similar. 
#They take three arguments, 
#and differ in the first argument. For mfork, the first 
#argument is a number, indicating how many children should be forked. 
+For 
#afork, the first argument is an array - a child will be 
#forked for each array element. The second argument indicates the maxi
+mum 
#number of children that may be alive at one time. The third argument 
+is a 
#code reference; this is the code that will be executed by the child. 
+One 
#argument will be given to this code fragment; for mfork it will be an
+ increasing number,
#starting at one. Each next child gets the next number. For afork, the
+ array element is 
#passed. Note that this code will assume no other children will be spa
+wned, 
#and that $SIG {CHLD} hasn't been set to IGNORE. 


mfork (10,10,\&hello);
sub hello{print "hello world\n";}

print "all done now\n";

################################################### 
sub mfork ($$&) {
my ($count, $max, $code) = @_;
foreach my $c (1 .. $count) {
wait unless $c <= $max;
die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
exit $code -> ($c) unless $pid;
}
1 until -1 == wait;
}
################################################## 
sub afork (\@$&) {
my ($data, $max, $code) = @_;
my $c = 0;
foreach my $data (@$data) {
wait unless ++ $c <= $max;
die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
exit $code -> ($data) unless $pid;
}
1 until -1 == wait;
}
#####################################################
[download]

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