in reply to How to fork one and only one child process from a loop ?

This skeleton has no error checking, but it does only spawn one child.

my $kidpid;
while( ... loop condition ... )
{
   .
   .
   .
   if( ! $kidpid)
   {
      if(0 == ($kidpid=fork()))
      {
         # I'm the child
         exec { ... }
         die("How did I get here?");
      }
   }
   # I'm the parent, keep doing stuff
   .
   .
   .
   # Before I loop, do a lame check to make sure kid
   # is still running. Ought to use a Proc:: Module
   $kidpid=0 if(! grep { m/^\s+$kidpid\s/ } `ps ax`);
}

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In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom