Because fork creates a copy of the environment, you can't "share" variables between the parent / child

Not 100% sure what you meant by that, but to review:

When you execute fork a copy of not only the environment but any variables pass from the parent to the child. If the child or parent modify their copy then the copies are out of sync.

| hand waving here
my $a=1;
my $b=2;

if ( fork() ){
         # becomes 2 for the parent
         $a++;
} else { 
         # becomes 3 for the child
         $a=3;
}
| etc.
[download]

A strategy to change this behavior can be to leverage off of signals.

       SIGUSR1     30    user defined signal 1
       SIGUSR2     31    user defined signal 2
[download]

Be careful here though as your mileage may vary wildly depending on the OS you are running on. The above signals exist on a Windows 7 box running Cygwin/X.

       SIGUSR1   30,10,16    Term    User-defined signal 1
       SIGUSR2   31,12,17    Term    User-defined signal 2
[download]

Those exist on CentOS. While there's commonality between those two I cannot vouch for other environments. The basic strategy is thus:

# handwaving
if ( fork() ){
     # this is the parent 
     $SIG{USR1)=\&parentHandler;
} else { 
     # child
     $SIG{USR1} =\&childHandler;
}
[download]

where parentHanlder and childHandler are mirror images of one another and take action appropriatly when the signal arrives.

Another strategy is to use the socketpair() system call. Read up on this strategy in peripc for more details. This allows for bidirectional communications between a child and parent very nicely.

Food for thought I hope...

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