Re: Bug in exit()?

[Wolfram Gloger]

Hello,

> I see your idea, however the standard merely says that calling anything other 
> than exec/_exit is undefined, not that it is disallowed.

Yes, sorry, I shouldn't use `disallowed' for `causes undefined
behaviour'.  Anyway, we hopefully agree now that one cannot expect
exit() to work properly after vfork().

> > >      default:   /* Parent is blocked until child exits */
> > 
> > How do you get that idea?  I'm pretty sure parent and child can
> > execute concurrently.
> 
> Traditional BSD semantics are that they cannot - again, see Stevens p193ff or 
> the BSD vfork man page - here's the FreeBSD vfork description:
... [snipped]
> Only those Unices which quickly hacked a vfork() as a simple call to fork() 
> do 
> allow the parent to execute before the child exits or execs.

Thanks -- I did not know this.  In fact, I agree that blocking the
parent is useful here.  However, SUSV2 strangely enough doesn't
mention it at all, so I assume that there can/could be systems where
vfork()!=fork() _and_ the parent is not blocked.

Regards,
Wolfram.