http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1058505


in reply to fork() interferring with backtick

why would the fork() interfere with the results from the backticks in line 8?
It could, if you'd have your own SIG{CHLD} handler, but you don't.

In second your example you are performing 1 fork call per @dir entry, and in first for each @dir entry * each @makelist entry

So those two examples are completelly different

I would suggest to minimize it to proof-of-concept code, so everyone could reproduce problem:
Remove `find ...` call, use `cat somefile` insted, don't use directory traversal. Minimize the code so it don't do anything unrelated to fork.