I have a simple but ugly script that reminds me of things I need help remembering. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#reminder.plx
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

$/ = "#-";

open(INFILE, "/foo/reminder.txt") or die "Can't open reminders.txt: $!
+";
my @reminders = <INFILE>;
my $random = rand(@reminders);
my $reminder = $reminders[$random];
$reminder =~ s/\d\. //g;

chomp $reminder;

my $pid; # From here on down is the part I don't like, although it doe
+s do what I want it to do.

defined ($pid = fork()) or die $!;
if ($pid==0)
{

$pid and last;
exec ("/usr/bin/zenity --display=:0.0 --info --title='Reminder' --text
+='$reminder' &") or die "Something went wrong:$!";
}
my $retval;
sleep 100;
$pid++;
kill 15, $pid;

[download]

The part that bothers me is the bit that finds the pid of zenity and kills it. I couldn't figure out/find a better way of finding the pid. The method I used seems to find the pid just before (numerically speaking) my zenity dialog, so I used $pid++ to get the pid I wanted, but this seems dangerous for reasons you probably understand better than I do. I'd appreciate any helpful suggestions on how to improve this script, especially the part I've just described.

I'm using Ubuntu linux btw.

In reply to Finding the PID of zenity in a perl script. by HappyTimeHarry

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