Re: fork() wait semantics

Eduardo Pérez
2002-10-15T22:51:23Z

On 2002-10-15 20:07:43 +0200, Marius Gedminas wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 04:58:44PM +0000, Eduardo Pérez wrote:
> > As an example consider bash. In case of fork() error the program
> > isn't even run thus causing a fatal error. If fork() waited for
> > resources to be available there wouldn't be any problem.
>
> No, thank you. This happened to me more than once (runaway fetchmail
> plugins). An error message about a failing fork() indicates
> immediately that I have too many processes, and I can kill them
> (thankfully kill is a bash builtin). If bash just waited silently I
> wouldn't know what to think.

But you are talking about buggy software.
If you software has bugs don't expect it to work properly.

These fork() semantics are for non-buggy software.