Sorry, I am new here but I have played with perl quite a bit.
Here is some code I came up with to spawn processes using fork.
It works and it seems quite simple...
my $kidpid = 0;
my $jobs_to_fork = 3;
my $i_am_the_master = 0;
my $samps = 0;
my $last_no = 10;
my $i = 0;
for ($i = 1; $i <= $jobs_to_fork; $i++) {
$kidpid = fork_me($kidpid);
print "$i. kidpid:$kidpid\n";
}
if ($kidpid == 0) {
$i_am_the_master = 1;
} else {
$i_am_the_master = 0;
}
sleep (3);
if ($i_am_the_master) {
print "I will look after my children\n";
} else {
printf ("I am a child %6d running the program.\n", $kidpid);
while ($samps < 1000000) {
$rnd_no = int(rand($last_no+1));
$samps++;
$total = $total+$rnd_no;
}
printf ("%6d: %d %f\n", $kidpid, $samps, ($total / $samps));
}
sub fork_me {
my $kpid = $_[0];
if ($kpid == 0) {
$kpid = fork(); # the master perserves himself and start another t
+hread
}
return($kpid); # the child sill just return to go do his job
}