in reply to start process in bg, get child PID

fork returns the PID of the child process in the parent (and 0 to the child process), so if I read you right, this ought to do it:

my $pid = fork or exec @whatever;

Update: In light of the other reply ... if you want to check that the fork succeeded, you need to check for definedness, not truth: 

defined(my $pid = fork) or die "No fork: '$!'";
if ($pid==0) {
  # child
  exec @whatever or die "No exec: '$!'";
}
# parent

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print "Just another Perl ${\(trickster and hacker)},"
The Sidhekin proves Sidhe did it!

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom