ne more thing. If you decide to use the Windows fork, do not use the sleep command in the parent or child. It hangs.

You sure? I've never encountered that:

C:\test>perl -le"if(fork){sleep 5;print'parent'}else{sleep 7;print'chi
+ld'}"
parent
child
[download]

Got code to demonstrate it?

Also, Win32::Sleep( $milliseconds ); is better that 4-arg select, and is built-in (doesn't need a module).