Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: UNIX question
Message-ID: <432@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 9-Dec-85 11:10:40 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.432
Posted: Mon Dec  9 11:10:40 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Dec-85 10:19:20 EST
References: <156@uw-june>
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 10

> My question: Is there any way to kill off these zombies so I can get
> 	     more processes ?  Or, failing that, is there any other
> 	     way to do what I want ?

Sure, have the parent wait() on terminated children.
If for some reason you have to avoid blocking, you
could have the wait() done in a SIGCLD signal handler.
Or, you could keep track of the child PIDs and probe
their state every so often via kill() with "signal" 0,
waiting on those that return failure from the kill().