What does fork() mean in Perl? [closed]

Question

I have a block of Perl code. I'm having some trouble understanding the same.

if(my $child = fork()) {
     #Do somthing
}
else {
     #Run system command
     return;
}

Could anyone please make me understand on What fork() does exactly in the above code?

Answer 1

fork creates new child process.

It returns the child pid to/in the parent process, 0 to/in the child process, or undef if the fork is unsuccessful.

The code you posted executes #Do somthing in parent process and #Run system command in child process but it does not check for possible fork failure.

URL(s):

• http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/fork.html