Fellow Monks,
In one of my scripts I start up several child processes as follows
foreach $item ( @array ) {
    if( $pid = fork ) {
        print "Forking off to $pid\n";
    } elsif( defined $pid ) {
        &proprietary_function( $item );
        print "Done with function\n";
        exit;
    } else {
        die "Can't fork: $!";
    }
}

[download]
My question is this:
  If I were to build up a list of PID's, how could I wait for them all to exit, and if they don't exit after a certain amount of time, kill them?
I've looked at perlipc and wait but I'm getting kind of confused about reaping and when to handle it.
Could I use something like
sub REAPER {
    my $waitedpid = wait;
    $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER;
}

[download]
And then change
    if( $pid = fork ) {
        print "Forking off to $pid\n";

[download]
To 
    if( $pid = fork ) {
        $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER;
        print "Forking off to $pid\n";

[download]
?

-- Dave

In reply to Waiting.. by spaz

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