use strict;  # I'm hinting that this should be part of the (error checking you took out)

my @pids;

while (1) {
    # Loop other processing here.
    push(@pids,load_file($this_file));
}

reap_children(@pids);

sub load_file() {
    my $childProcess;

    $childProcess = fork();

    unless($childProcess) {
        # Child process so lets exec the loader.
        exec("loader $this_file");
        exit 0;
    }
    return $childProcess;
}

sub reap_children() {
    foreach(@_) {
        wait($_);
    }
}