[Jim] It's still unclear to me what the first argument of system(), 1, is for…

[ambrus] For the first argument of system being 1, please see perldoc perlport.

I know about this fleeting reference; I've read it before. But this is all it says about wait() and waitpid():

Can only be applied to process handles returned for processes spawned using system(1, ...) or pseudo processes created with fork(). (Win32)

Huh? It doesn't explain the peculiar and non-orthogonal first argument, 1.

Thank you again, ambrus.

Jim