Perl fork or system

[Sonika Sachdeva]

Hi,

I need to run " perl sample.pl $filename " from a perl program . The output
is a zip file which needs to be processed further.
Now the issues are:

1. this execution takes around 10-15 mins and i need to wait for it to
complete bfore i start the next execution with a new filename.
2. get hold of the output zip file for processing

I have 2 options
1.
$retval = system("perl sample.pl $filename");
I would need a while loop to poll the "$?" for the complete execution of the
system command.

2.

if (!defined($kidpid = fork())) {
    # fork returned undef, so failed
    die "cannot fork: $!";
} elsif ($kidpid == 0) {
                # fork returned 0, so this branch is the child
    exec("perl sample.pl $filename");
                # if the exec fails, fall through to the next statement
    die "can't exec command: $!";
} else {
                # fork returned neither 0 nor undef,
                # so this branch is the parent
    waitpid($kidpid, 0);
}

which one can I use ? How to get the output .zip file for processing (
this perl program is executed on a windows system)

Thanks,