Yeah, Perl threads are only useful if you need to share data in realtime between threads, even then then they are slower than forking and using shared memory IPC. BUT, when the data shared is minimal, threads are easier to setup and deal with. Pure C threads work so much better, Perl's handling of threads adds alot of complications. For instance, in C a Perl shared::variable is just a global variable, and memory gets returned to the system when a thread is joined. Threads in Perl can give you the wrong impression of how well threads work in C.... see gdk-threads