Launching numerous instances of the same program

[Terrabyte]

How can I launch many instances of the same program from within a perl script. An example would be starting 10 instances of calc on the Win32 platform. When I use system, it waits for a response. When I use exec, it shifts to calc. If I fork, I just start myself again. Help!!!!

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

[extremely]

Fork 10 children and exec calc in the children. Also, FYI a fork in a loop is called a fork-bomb. Make sure you know exactly how your loop works so that you don't consume all the allowed resources under your OS and kill the box. I've personally seen a 1/4 million dollar machine rebooted more than once over other goofballs doing this. People loose root access, their jobs, or get the FBI called on them for tricks of this sort. =)

[repson]

On a win32 system you will want create processes with Win32::Process in a loop. A fork and exec will not work in windows.

[turnstep]

Don't expect fork to work very well under Win32 either...see the thread fork on Win32

[jplindstrom]

I personally like Win32::Process, but another way of doing this (the Windows way of starting things with &) is to use the "start" command.

Type "start /?" at the command line to get the options.

/J