Your 'my $handle' line should be something like this:

my $handle = new IO::File(">$file") or die "Can't open $file: $!";

# Or in 5.005 or later to avoid having to use IO::File
# (doesn't seem to work in 5.004)
my $handle = \do { local *FH };
open ($handle, ">$file") or die ..etc.
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Update:Do you really want the WNOHANG on the waitpid loop? You'll just be chewing up CPU until all the children exit. Better (I think) to leave out the WNOHANG and let the process block.

Update2:hmm, just plain 'my $handle' seems to work ok in 5.6 - I wonder when that happened? Does that mean that this particular use for Dominus' Globjects (and for that matter, alot of the reason for FileHandle and IO::File) is now pointless?