in reply to Feeding processes through one pipe

You could roll this all yourself, using flock to control semaphore access across threads, but this is a problem that has been solved already. I'd recommend checking out threads and Thread::Semaphore if you want to roll your own job queue. Alternatively, there are several available, including TheSchwartz and POE-based solutions.

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom