Dear Monks,

I'm finally approaching the end of the llama, and almost ready to begin my first big project, which I'm designing now. Perl Monks has helped me through this tremendously, and I thank all of you for your time, effort, patience and encouragement :).

However, there seems to be one last hump I'm having a lot of trouble getting over. I can not seem to wrap my head around the concepts of Process Management. I believe a big part of the problem is that I'm not very efficient at System Administration on Unix/Linux based systems, and even though I do work/code on a Linux box, as far as system commands and administration, I still have a long way to go.

I have the first and third editions of the llama book, Perl in a Nutshell, the Camel book and the cookbook, but none of these (and believe me, I've read and re-read all of them searching for anything that might make the light go on) seem to be enlightening me. The concepts of parent-child relationships, system/exec, processes, forking, process operations, etc. is just completely frustrating to me. I'm seriously at a stand still in my advancement in Perl, because I'm right here at the end, and the last concept is stumping me! Has anyone else experienced this in their Perl quest? Should I stop pursuing Perl and focus on Linux administration for a bit, then return? Any and all suggestions, tips, even harsh lectures meant to slap one in the face with much needed knowledge, would be welcome at this point, I'm desperate for ideas on how to move forward, as I am so incredibly anxious to finish this book and begin working on my projects.

Thank you all for your time, my dearest Monks. If anyone experienced this same situation, perhaps because of a lack of Linux skills at the time of learning Perl, as in my case, please let me know if any type of study based on outside materials, certain exercises, books, anything, helped the light bulb finally come on. I'm almost to the point where I can function and begin to be a contribution rather than a drain, Monks, just once more (hopefully) I beg for your patience and help in such an elementary matter :).

UPDATE:

Thank you all so much for your responses. :D I do understand the parent - child process much better now, and as far as everything else goes in process management concepts, I am now armed with some fantastic resources, so hopefully, a few dozen light bulbs will be coming on in koolgirl's head over the next few weeks. Geeze, I know one day I'm gonna look back on this, ya know when Rockstar Programming Inc. has out sold everything Microsoft has ever tried to do, and turn bright red with humiliation. However, I will hopefully still have my fellow Monks to laugh about it with ;).

In reply to Process Management by koolgirl

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