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From: lenox@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Lenox H. Brassell)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: qfork() (The Spawn of spawn())
Summary: MSC spawn() quite nice under OS/2
Message-ID: <16521@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 91 18:04:40 GMT
References: <16066@cs.utexas.edu> <16271@cs.utexas.edu> <16307@cs.utexas.edu> <16478@cs.utexas.edu> <16478@cs.utexas.edu>,
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Submitted-by: lenox@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Lenox H. Brassell)

In article <16478@cs.utexas.edu>, guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum) writes:
> (Note that the
> spawn() functions found in Microsoft C for MS-DOS emulate either just
> exec() or fork()+exec()+wait(), which is much less powerful, but
> all that MS-DOS can support (last time I looked).)
> 

Using Microsoft C under OS/2, you can pass P_NOWAIT as the first
argument to the MSC spawn() functions, and the child process will run
asynchronously.  The spawn() functions return the child process's PID
in this case.

Although MSC is certainly not a UNIX compiler, this "prior art" might
be a good place to start if POSIX needs a "safe" qfork()+exec() service.


--lenox (lenox@media-lab.mit.edu)

Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 59