I'd just finished writing threads::system when I read your reply.

It's good news that fork seems to only clone the current thread, but, like you say, it sounds very system-dependant, and inconsistent.

May I ask for criticism on the following module? If enough people think it's worthwhile, I'll tweak it a bit, and then upload to CPAN (although, I may change the name to something less dominant first):

#!/usr/bin/perl

package threads::system;

require Exporter;
@ISA = qw{Exporter};
@EXPORT_OK = qw{system};

use threads::shared;
use IO::Handle;
use strict; use warnings;

pipe my ($crh, $cwh) or die "Could not pipe: $!";  # Command string re
+ad/write handles
pipe my ($erh, $ewh) or die "Could not pipe: $!";  # Exit status read/
+write handles
$cwh->autoflush(1); $ewh->autoflush(1);

my $sync : shared;

my $child = fork;
die "Could not fork: $!" if $child < 0;
unless ($child) {  # We are the child (daemon) - we handle system() ca
+lls for our parent
    close $erh; close $cwh;
    while (<$crh>) {  # Read commands to exec
        my $child = fork;
        die "Could not fork: $!" if $child < 0;
        unless ($child) {  # We are the child - we exec() for our pare
+nt
            exec $_; exit $!;
        } else {  # Parent - communicate our child's failure with our 
+own parent
            while (my $pid = waitpid $child, 0) {  # Is all this reall
+y needed?
                if ($pid < 0) { die "Error: waitpid: $!" }
                elsif ($pid == 0) { next }
                else { print $ewh $?, "\n"; last }  # Tell parent!
            }
        }
    }
    # Decide: is the following a feature or a bug?
    exit;  # Should never happen, unless client does system(undef), or
+ something
} else {  # Parent
    close $ewh; close $crh;
}

sub system {
    lock($sync);
    my $string = shift;  # TODO: Accept a full list
    print $cwh $string, "\n" or die "Could not write: $!";
    return <$erh>;
}

1
[download]

Example of usage:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use threads::system qw{system};

use strict; use warnings;

my $code = system("ls -al /etc");
print "Exited with code: $code\n";
[download]

Output is as expected. Thanks