well, for everything except the force quit polling a handle would work while the process is active... each time it finishes a command it checks if it has been asked to quit... problem is the child may spend a long time waiting... i've got the handle to the socket on NS, and i am processing commands in a

    while( <NS> ){ ... }
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so if the user isn't sending anything the process waits until they do before it continues processing...

that said, i think i have to use some means of interrupt, like a signal...

if there are any alternatives, again, i'm open to suggestions, but all the perl documentation on IPC generally focuses on signals...

                               Xan.
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