Without knowing what the code looked like without the match, I'm guessing, but if you just remove the match and it's associated block, then you are using two different variables in different scopes both named $pid, the assignment just after the sleep will go out of scope at the end of that block, and the other $pid (which is the one the while is checking) will never change, so the loop will never end.

If you remove the match block, and also remove the my from the assignment just before it then it should work, although I'd probably do it something like this instead...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# 
# cat data obtained from collector script

use strict;

while ( my $pid = `pgrep -f _collectDataScript.pl` ) {
    print "Waiting for process $pid";
    sleep(10);
}

[download]
We're not surrounded, we're in a target-rich environment!

In reply to Re: process management by jasonk
in thread process management by semio

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.