Greetings,

I'm trying to understand forking in perl. The following codes explodes in a cloud of children in spite of my attempts to limit them. What have I done wrong? 

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark;

my $count = 2;
my $max_children = 5;
my @array = ( 1 .. 10 );
my $x;

sub straight {
    my $c=0;
    foreach $x (@array){
        $c++;
        sleep 1;
    }
    print "straight c = $c\n";
};


sub fork {
    my $iterations=0;
    my $children=0;
    my $pid;

    foreach $x (@array) {

        $pid = fork;
        if ($pid == 0){ # Is a child
            $iterations++;
            sleep 1;

        } else { # fork returned new child pid
            $children++;
            $iterations++;
            sleep 1;
            if ( $children >= $max_children ){
                wait;
                $children--;
            }
        }

    }
    if ($pid == 0){ # Is a child
        exit;
    }
    wait;
    print "interations = $iterations\n";
}

timethese (
    $count,
    {
        'straight' => '&straight',
        'fork' => '&fork'
    }
);
exit;

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In reply to Help with Fork bomb by Anonymous Monk

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