This is helpful; a few more refinements to my question:

The return order doesn't matter very much; as long as I can pass something unique to each process ($item in my example, $x in yours), I can use that to produce output that identifies who it came from.

Is there a way to gather the collective output using a variable rather than a temporary file? Is there any good reason not to just append to a string (like $output in my example?)

Lastly, I need to be able to limit the life of the child process; if the search takes too long or something else happens, I need to be able to kill it off. I can probably find examples of this somewhere, but it would be useful to have an example from someone who already knows my problem space.

Thanks for your help.

In reply to Re: Fork/Spawn by Silas
in thread Fork/Spawn by Silas

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