By Popular Request, the dacts() function: 

sub dacts
{
  my ($un, $pwd, $srvr, $port) = @_;
  my $r; my $n;

  warn qq-attempting $srvr:$port- if $DEBUG;
  $r = $n = MP3::Napster -> new ( qq-$srvr:$port- );
  if ($r) { warn qq-connected to server\n- if $DEBUG } else { warn qq-
+never connected to $srvr:$port- ; return }

  warn qq-username: $un | password: $pwd-;

  $n -> my_login ( $un, $pwd, qq-ralphnap-, LINK_UNKNOWN, 8899 );
    if (!$n) { warn qq-could not log in to server $srvr : $! \n $@- ; 
+return }

  warn qq-logged in okay...\n- if $DEBUG;
  return $n;
  1
}

[download]

and, while i appreciate it, AgentM, I of course ran it with one instance, and it works. It is working fine as I write this, with 60 connections up (and netscape and an opennap server and zillions of rxvt's. When I say that it doesnt fork(), I mean that one process is running. It is my understanding from perldoc -f fork ...

Does a fork(2) system call to create a new process running the
same program at the same point.  It returns the child pid to the
parent process, C<0> to the child process, or C<undef> if the fork is
unsuccessful.  File descriptors (and sometimes locks on those descript
+ors)

[download]
actually spawns a new process. The amount of memory actually used in this case is pretty slim compared to what most would expect: 
MemTotal:       189248 kB
MemFree:          7540 kB
SwapTotal:      393156 kB
SwapFree:       380144 kB

[download]
So I think I have concluded here that memory is not the issue, unless something else is coming up that I'm missing.

--
i am not cool enough to have a signature.

In reply to Re: Re: So is this a kernel limitation, a hardware limitation, or a perl limitation? by deprecated
in thread So is this a kernel limitation, a hardware limitation, or a perl limitation? by deprecated

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