Proc::Pidfile
=============

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.


Installation
------------

The usual ...

> perl Makefile.PL
> make
[ > make test ]
> make install

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.

Author
------

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