You answered my question perfectly (I confess I'm new to the IPC game; actually I started reading that part of the Llama today). Good links. :)

In regards to the original question...I found this code on wikipedia, and it seems to do what you want(?).

#!/usr/bin/perl
 
$pid = fork();    #Declare fork
if ($pid == 0) {  #Jump into the Child process
    for ($j = 0; $j < 10; $j++) {
        print "child: $j\n";
        sleep 1;
    }
    exit(0);  #Exit the fork [child process]
} elsif ($pid > 0) {
    for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
        print "parent: $i\n";
        sleep 1;
    }
    exit(0);  #Exit parent
}
[download]

So the thing here is to test the pid. In your code, you would say:

$pm->finish if ($pid == 0 && $content =~ m/string/);
#...no match, do more work...
$pm->finish;
[download]

Or am I totally missing the boat here (likely)? :)