Video stuck on system(1, @commands) in Perl script

Question

I'm trying to write a Perl script that runs videos in a directory n times on Windows Media Player one after the other.

For some reason, on the 64th video playing, it gets stuck on system(1, @commands).

Right now, the command is system(1, "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Windows Media Player\\wmplayer", $path); in the following for-loop.

for (my $i = 0; $i < $n; $i++)
{
    # do stuff

    # Play video
    system(1, "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Windows Media Player\\wmplayer", $path);

    sleep $duration + 1;

    # do stuff
} 

I'm wondering why it keeps stopping at the 64th video (I've run this multiple times and it's always the 64th.) Maybe someone can explain system(1, @commands) better to me? All I know is that it just doesn't wait for @commands to finish before continuing the program...

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

You've reached the maximum number of child processes you can have running simultaneously. Reap those that have completed using waitpid.

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Alternatively, if you don't care about the process's exit code, you might have better luck with

system(qq{start /b "" "c:\...\wmplayer" "$path"});