Has anyone been able to successfully use fork() in the Windows and OLE environment? I have tried a simple test case and I get bizarre error messages after blowing the Perl interpreter out of the water.

Here is a snippet of the test case code:

$| = 1;
if ($pid = fork) {
    print "this is the parent $pid\n";
    while ($prange ne '$A$3') {
        eval {$prange = $excel->ActiveCell->{Address};};
        print "$@\n" if ($@);
        print "Active cell address $prange\n";
        sleep 3;
    }
} elsif (defined $pid) {
    print "this is the child $pid\n";
    $msg = "When finished editing, close the file\.";
    Win32::MsgBox("$msg",vbOKOnly,$mbt);
    #$ans = <STDIN>;
    exit;
} else {
    print "fell through\n";
}
[download]

The message box appears correctly. The output in the "Run" (aka Command Prompt) window from which the program is started is as follows:

this is the parent -2072
this is the child 0
Active cell address $C$23
Active cell address $C$23
[download]

and that continues until I click on "OK" in the message box. At that point I get the following messages:

Attempt to free non-existent shared string 'Range' at <eval 1> line 1.
Free to wrong pool 1e5da80 not 223f90 at <eval 1> line 1.
[download]

If I uncomment the "$ans = <STDIN>;" statement I get the same error messages but they now say:

Attempt to free non-existent shared string 'Range' at <eval 1> line 1,
+ <STDIN> line 1.
Free to wrong pool 1e5dce0 not 223f90 at <eval 1> line 1, <STDIN> line
+ 1.
[download]

If I comment out the "exit" statement in the child block I immediately get the window that says the "Perl Command Line Interpreter has encountered a problem and needs to close" and asks if I want to send a report to Microsoft. In this case the command prompt window has this very interesting error message:

Undefined subroutine &Carp::shortness_heavy called at c:/Perl/lib/Carp
+.pm line 182.
Free to wrong pool 1e5da30 not 223f90.
[download]

I then get "Active cell address" output every 3 seconds until I click on "Don't send" to Microsoft box. Then the Perl program terminates.

Is there something basic that I am missing?

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