SPUG: exec question

[Tim Maher]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 09:23:16AM -0800, Dan Ebert wrote:
> I have a script which manages a bunch of other scripts.  Basically it
> kicks off a specific script depending on the situation it sees when it
> runs.
> 
> I want it to kick off the script then exit without waiting around for the
> other script to finish.  I thought this would do it:
> 
> # code to decide what script to use
> exec($script);
> but the manager script doesn't exit when it does the exec.  Any ideas?
> Thanks,
> 
> Dan.

If $script contains the name of a file with a proper shebang line,
and you're on UNIX or Linux, and $PATH is set to the directory $script
is in or $script contains the pathname directory itself, then 
something like this might be what you're after:

system "nohup $script > /tmp/output.$$ 2>&1 &" ;

That command runs $script in the background (so the parent won't
wait for it to complete), with STDOUT and STDERR redirected to
a unique filename.  

-Tim 
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