In article <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask] (Randy Kaelber) writes: > Chris Carman ([log in to unmask]) wrote: >> Shouldn't the process ID change every time it's run? Basically, all I want is >> a unique number every time this script I'm working on is run, and although it >> wouldn't be a problem to put in a little counter subroutine, I just figured a >> process ID would be easier. Any ideas? Thanks! > > What you're up against is OpenVMS, unlike the UNIX variants, does not fork > a new process everytime you run a command. So, you're getting the process > ID of your DCL process. Before we can address what you need to do instead, Ah, okay. > what is that that you're wanting to accomplish with the unique number? Well, I have a workaround, but what I wanted to do was create a unique data file every time a script is run. This one way I got around it: open(PID,"show process/dump|"); $line=<PID>; $line=<PID>; $file = substr($line,0,23); $file =~ s/\ //g; $file =~ s/\:/-/g; $line=<PID>; $line=<PID>; $line=<PID>; close (PID); This just results in a filename like 4-NOV-199615-04-56.41, which is as close to unique as I can get. Anyway, it didn't work out; I'm having prolems getting a script to send a mail message right now. -Chris Carman [log in to unmask] -http://www.muohio.edu/~carmance/ -http://www.foofighters.com/foo -http://www.scratchie.com/