Hi Monks, So I have a conceptual question. I am wondering if there's a way that I can distinguish between different childs; is there a child number, like first child, second child etc? What I would like is, each time the parent spawns off a child it would also give the child some distinct number so the different childs can, say, look at different files. For example: 
 
#!/usr/bin/perl

@dirname;
$dirname[0]="TestList1.log";
$dirname[1]="TestList2.log";
$dirname[2]="TestList3.log";

for(1..4) {
  my $pid = fork();
  if ($pid) {
    # parent
    push(@childs, $pid);
    print "we are in the parent bus \n";
    waitpid($pid,0);
  } elsif ($pid == 0) {
    # child
    # here I want to read a different file each child
    # so child 1 would read dirname[0] 
    # so child 2 would read dirname[1] 
    # so child 3 would read dirname[2] 
    # and they would all do the same thing, 
    # but on different files

    # something like:
    #$mm = @child array's element number 
     open (filelist, @dirname[$mm]) || die "couldn't open the file!";
    @filename;
    @filename = <filelist>;
    print "@filename \n";
    sleep 5;
    exit(0);
  } else {
    die "couldn’t fork: $! \n";
  }
  print "LAST IN FOR \n";
}
print "AFTER FOR \n";

[download]
Thanks a lot! - cartmanofvan

In reply to fork : distinguish between different child? by Anonymous Monk

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