in reply to executing a list of programs

system performs a fork first, which is why a new process is spawned for every program you run. If you want to run them sequentially, use exec.

You may also want to use some sort of scheduling mechanism, such as Unix cron or a cool Perl version like Schedule::Cron.

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Re^2: executing a list of programs
by ccn (Vicar) on Jul 30, 2004 at 13:36 UTC

    fork is done first, and the parent process waits for the child process to complete.

    So, using system you can not run processes simultaneously. But if you use exec, you can not run a list of processes, as OP wants, because the exec never returns.

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