Re: fork() wait semantics

Marius Gedminas
2002-10-15T18:01:58Z

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
immediatelly 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.

Marius Gedminas
--
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
-- Douglas Hofstadter