Idioms: "Background"

• The fork function clones the current process

• There is one process before the fork, two after

• What's the return value from fork?

• fork returns false in the new process (the child process)

• fork returns true in the old process (the parent process)

• So:

        if (fork) {
          # I am the parent
        } else {
          # I am the child
        }

• How about this?

        if (fork) {
          exit;
        }
        # I am the child

• How about this?

        # IDIOM
        fork && exit;   # Run in the background

Next

Menu

Copyright © 2005 M. J. Dominus