Sequentially?

   use strict;
   use warnings;
   foreach (@ARGV) {
      &process($_);
   }
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In parallel?

   use strict;
   use warnings;
   foreach (@ARGV) {
      die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
      exit &process($_) unless $pid;
   }
   1 until -1 == wait;
   ...
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Restrained parallel?

   use strict;
   use warnings;
   my $max = 4;
   my $c   = 0;
   foreach (@ARGV) {
      wait unless ++$c <= $max;
      die "Fork failed: $!\n" unless defined (my $pid = fork);
      exit &process($_) unless $pid;
   }
   1 until -1 == wait;
   ...
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I leave the process routine and appropriate error checking to you.

Do the parameters 1 2 3... give any additional information? I.e. is 1 "M" 3 "007" a useful combination of parameters that is different from 1 "M" 2 "007"? If not, just drop them, the number of instances you want to call is trivially determinded by the number of arguments you give your perl program

Rather than using the ~ 1 "M" 2 "007" 3 "MI6" ~ format, just provide the arugments you want to each instance of the EXE to the Perl script as arguments.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

foreach (@ARGV) {
    system ("James.exe $_")
}
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Then simply use:

bond.pl M 007 "MI-6" "this is how youd send multiple to one EXE instan
+ce"
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to run

James.exe M
James.exe 007
James.exe MI-6
James.exe this is how youd send multiple to one EXE instance
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How do you provide the double quotes for double quoted arguments - for example, when there are paths or file names with spaces in them?

---

True laziness is hard work

I tested this on Windows XP with ActiveState Perl v5.8.8

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

foreach (@ARGV) {
    print "Staring:  NOTEPAD $_\n";
    system ("start notepad $_")
}
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{C} > test \AUTOEXEC.BAT "\Documents and Settings\601404184\My Documents\mcafee.txt" test.pl
Staring: NOTEPAD \AUTOEXEC.BAT
Staring: NOTEPAD \Documents and Settings\601404184\My Documents\mcafee.txt
Staring: NOTEPAD test.pl

{C} >


NOTE: That's the output you see in CMD.EXE window. Also, three instances of NOTEPAD.EXE open, with each file in one of the Notepads.

Does that answer the question re: double-quotes for file names? The second argument had spaces and the first two had backslashes, also could be an issue, but handled fine. I understand slashes would be the other way on *nix path names and spaces would need to be escaped so I don't know how well this would work. Also, you wouldn't use "start" in the system() call; rather, an ampersand (&) to launch the program in the background perhaps?