Equivalent of Perl's fork() function

[o0zi]

I'm writing a bi-directional chat program in Perl, which requires the use of fork() so I can send data and listen for incoming data at the same time. However, fork() doesn't work on Windows XP, so is there something else I can use to achieve the same result?

[bwkaz]

Abandon XP?

Nothing in the Windows API that I know of is close to fork(). There's CreateProcess(), but that requires a path to an executable to start up in the new process, so you can't just "continue from this point on".

Does Perl have support for threads rather than using fork()?

[o0zi]

Perl has support for threads but only if you compile it in (which is too difficult on Windows XP) and it probably only works on Linux anyway :(

Of course, my chat program works perfectly on Linux!