If you are using fork on Vista, you aren't forking and there are no child processes involved. Which might explain why you can't get your misunderstanding to align with the documentation.
See this (skip down to the section labelled "How Perl does it" if your in a hurry) to understand what's "brain dead".
In reply to Re^6: why won't the hash go away?
by BrowserUk
in thread why won't the hash go away?
by WoodyWeaver
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