The if is executed in both the parent and the child, as made obvious by the "then" part being executed in the parent and the "else" part being executed in the child.

So why do you think the line that follows the if would only be executed in the parent?

exec replaces the program the process is executing with another and it never returns (except on error). So yes, using exec is appropriate since you don't want to continue executing the program int he child.

By the way, system is a combination of fork, exec and wait or waitpid. That might fail if the child launched by fork ends before the child launched by system. You might have to avoid using system to customize the use of wait

In reply to Re: using system and exec in same script using child by ikegami
in thread using system and exec in same script using child by convenientstore

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.