in reply to Multi- Processing / threading under Win32

I can't reproduce your crash? ( I substituted 0 for &WNOHANG, whatever that is?) 

C:\perl561\bin>perl5.6.1 p:387607.pl
644
258
258
258
258
Undefined subroutine &main::WNOHANG called at p:387607.pl line 22.

C:\perl561\bin>perl5.6.1 p:387607.pl
700
258
258
258
258
Finished:  1 [1148 1380 1444 1196]
C:\perl561\bin>perl5.6.1 p:387607.pl
840
327
327
327
327
Finished:  1 [1976 1708 584 1916]

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