[ale] Any Perl Gurus Out There?

[Fletch]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> writes:

    Jim> The linux kernel will clean up defunct processes when it has
    Jim> time (low priority).  Most likely your loop is "too tight"
    Jim> and injecting some latency periods will help.  Try adding a
    Jim> "sleep 2;" at the bottom of your loop.

Defunct processes are children which have exited but the parent
process hasn't called some form of wait(2) to retrieve the exit status
yet.  They'll stay around as entries in the process table until
something waits on them.  What normally happens is the parent will
(eventually) call wait itself.  If it doesn't before it exits, any
children will be reparented to init (pid 1) which calls wait and
clears up the entry.  The kernel itself doesn't enter into it aside
from reparenting orphaned processes.
</pedant>

-- 
Fletch                | "If you find my answers frightening,       __`'/|
fletch at phydeaux.org|  Vincent, you should cease askin'          \ o.O'
                      |  scary questions." -- Jules                =(___)=
                      |                                               U