You should also check out
Network Programming with Perl.
The first two chapters are devoted to exactly what you need.
Then, after you master those concepts, you've got a whole
book on applying that knowledge to networking. Awesome book!
Process management is the fancy name for getting
programs to 'talk' to each other, keeping track of
what a program is doing, keeping track of the children
spawned, etc. Very important stuff.
Jeff
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