http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=176225


in reply to spawning multiple child processes

Sounds like a job for the Perl cook-book to me. Section 17.11 (Forking Servers) has an example of a server that forks off a new process for each connection it receives. This is similar to what you're doing, except I presume you wish to fork off a new process for each server in your list.

The fork call creates a duplicate of a process, called a child. This child can do whatever it likes, independantly to the parent (including using exec to replace itself with another program).

A very basic framework for what you're after might look like this (adapted from the code mentioned above in the Perl Cookbook):

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @servers = qw(LIST OF SERVERS); foreach my $server (@servers) { my $pid; next if $pid = fork; # Parent goes to next server. die "fork failed: $!" unless defined $pid; # From here on, we're in the child. Do whatever the # child has to do... The server we want to deal # with is in $server. exit; # Ends the child process. } # The following waits until all child processes have # finished, before allowing the parent to die. 1 while (wait() != -1); print "All done!\n";

That should hopefully give you a good start on solving your problem. Don't hestiate to ask questions if anything doesn't make sense.

All the best,

Paul Fenwick
Perl Training Australia