I have a Ruby program that loads up two very large yaml files, so I can get some speed-up by taking advantage of the multiple cores by forking off some processes. I've tried looking, but I'm having trouble figuring how, or even if, I can share variables in different processes.

The following code is what I currently have:

@proteins = ""
@decoyProteins = "" 

fork do
  @proteins = YAML.load_file(database)
  exit
end

fork do
  @decoyProteins = YAML.load_file(database)
  exit
end

p @proteins["LVDK"]

P displays nil though because of the fork.

So is it possible to have the forked processes share the variables? And if so, how?