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From: jaswal@suna2.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: fork() under MS/DOS?
Message-ID: <69400001@suna2>
Date: 18 Sep 90 01:49:00 GMT
References: <10718@life.ai.mit.edu>
Lines: 17
Nf-ID: #R:life.ai.mit.edu:10718:suna2:69400001:000:727
Nf-From: suna2.cs.uiuc.edu!jaswal    Sep 17 20:49:00 1990


If you have Desqview or Windows and you successfully write a fork()
that's compatible with Unix's, it would be in very high demand!

As far as I know, Desqview provides preemptive scheduling, meaning
that it can steal control from multiple tasks.  This is how
Unix does it.  Windows does non-preemptive scheduling, meaning that
concurrent tasks must voluntarily give up control of the processor
before other tasks get a time slice.  (I'm not positive of this.)
This may have changed with Windows v3.0 or when running on a 286 
or 386.

Anyway, fork() might have to be written differently depending on 
the type of scheduling done.  Both environments provide lots of
programming tools and system calls, especially Windows.

vsj