I was under the impression that doing an "exec" would simply start the process and leave it. By not waiting for a return value, you should be able to continue processing.
Unfortunately, I don't generally do a whole lot with system and exec calls, but perlipc (perldoc perlipc) does :)
Thanks
--
Ben
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart."
Comment on Re: Creating External Processes without losing control
exec does not start a new process.
exec replaces the current process with a new
process executing the given executable. A successful exec
will never return, as the original process's code is no
longer executing. exec is often combined with fork
to split off a child process and cause that process
to execute the given executable.