Pidfile(3)

NAME
Proc::Pidfile - a simple OO Perl module for maintaining a process id file for the curent process

SYNOPSIS
    my $pp = Proc::Pidfile->new( pidfile => "/path/to/your/pidfile" );
    # if the pidfile already exists, die here
    $pidfile = $pp->pidfile();
    undef $pp;
    # unlink $pidfile here

    my $pp = Proc::Pidfile->new();
    # creates pidfile in default location - /var/run or File::Spec->tmpdir ...
    my $pidfile = $pp=>pidfile();
    # tells you where this pidfile is ...

    my $pp = Proc::Pidfile->new( silent => 1 );
    # if the pidfile already exists, exit silently here
    ...
    undef $pp;

DESCRIPTION
Proc::Pidfile is a very simple OO interface which manages a pidfile for the current process. You can pass the path to a pidfile to use as an argument to the constructor, or you can let Proc::Pidfile choose one (basically, "/var/run/$basename", if you can write to /var/run, otherwise "/$tmpdir/$basename").

Pidfiles created by Proc::Pidfile are automatically removed on destruction of the object. At destruction, the module checks the process id in the pidfile against its own, and against its parents (in case it is a spawned child of the process that originally created the Proc::Pidfile object), and barfs if it doesn't match either.

If you pass a "silent" parameter to the constructor, then it will still check for the existence of a pidfile, but will exit silently if one is found. This is useful for, for example, cron jobs, where you don't want to create a new process if one is already running, but you don't necessarily want to be informed of this by cron.

SEE ALSO
Proc::PID::File

AUTHOR
Ave Wrigley <Ave.Wrigley@itn.co.uk>

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2003 Ave Wrigley. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.