Re: best way to kill a spawned process

[tobyink]

use strict;
use warnings;

if (my $child = fork) {
    # foreground process
    sleep 5;
    kill 9, $child;
}

else {
    # background process
    exec("arecord", "file.wav");
}

The fork plus exec combination allows you to cleanly launch a background process, and gives you the PID for the background process, which can later be passed to kill.

[redss]

That works...thanks!

[Anonymous Monk]

Take his choice of signal with a large grain of salt [1]:

No no no.  Don't use kill -9.

It doesn't give the process a chance to cleanly:

1) shut down socket connections

2) clean up temp files

3) inform its children that it is going away

4) reset its terminal characteristics

and so on and so on and so on.

Generally, send 15, and wait a second or two, and if that doesn't
work, send 2, and if that doesn't work, send 1.  If that doesn't,
REMOVE THE BINARY because the program is badly behaved!

Don't use kill -9.  Don't bring out the combine harvester just to tidy
up the flower pot.

Just another Useless Use of Usenet,

[1] http://www.partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html#uuk9letter