Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!sunic!maxim!prc From: prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: The trouble with fork() (Re: IBM PC prehistory) Message-ID: <1089@maxim.erbe.se> Date: 17 Jan 90 08:21:23 GMT References: <7413@drilex.UUCP> <380@bambam.UUCP> <44106@wlbr.IMSD.CONTEL.COM> Organization: ERBE DATA AB, Jarfalla, Sweden Lines: 20 In article , peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > Wouldn't it be nice if there was a sanctioned P1003 subset that replaced > fork() with a combined fork()/exec() call (spawn?). Or just an addition > of spawn to the standard as an alternative process creation mechanism: > This would radically improve the performance of non-UNIX POSIX systems, > without compromising the capability of the standard... An old (4.0?) Microsoft C compiler for MS-DOS that I have in my bookshelf has a set of spawn() functions in its library with variations like spawnl(), spawnle() like the exec() family of functions. Oh yes, all functions takes an additional parameter that indicates whether the parent process should wait for the child to terminate before it continues execution (in which case it behaves more like the system() function without the overhead of invoking a shell). One last note -- MS-DOS only supports the wait-for-child-to-die flag... -- Robert Claeson E-mail: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB