Hi monks! I am using ActivePerl-5.8.8 in a Windows XP OS.
I want to do a simple fork and exit parent when child returns. The problem is that waitpid() never seems to return something other than 0 and the program hangs with the error message "Perl Command Line Interpreter has encountered an error and needs to close".
I have seen several posts questioning Perl's ability to fork correctly in Windows systems. I would appreciate any help. I am posting my code: 
use Win32::OLE('in');
use POSIX":sys_wait_h";
my $pid = fork();
my $check;
die "can't fork:$?" unless(defined $pid);
if ($pid != 0) {
    print "I am the parent\n";
    my $flag = 0;
    while ($flag == 0) {
        $check = waitpid($pid,&WNOHANG);
        print "Waitpid returned $check\n";
        if ($check > 0) {
            print "Parent caught death of child $pid\n";
            $flag = 1;
        }
        else {
            sleep 1;    
            print "Not yet caught\n";
        }
    }
    print "Parent is exiting\n";
}    
else {
    print "I am the child\n";
    sleep 3;
    print "Child is exiting\n";
    exit (0);
}

[download]
The output I am getting is :
I am the parent
Waitpid returned 0
I am the child
Not yet caught
Waitpid returned 0
Not yet caught
Waitpid returned 0
Not yet caught
Waitpid returned 0
Child is exiting
Not yet caught
Waitpid returned 0
Not yet caught
Waitpid returned 0
...

In reply to Waitpid does not work as expected in Windows by athanasia

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