Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ll-xn!husc6!bloom-beacon!tytso From: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Fork and Join, Pipe in C Message-ID: <1028@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Date: Sun, 28-Jun-87 17:03:12 EDT Article-I.D.: bloom-be.1028 Posted: Sun Jun 28 17:03:12 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jun-87 20:36:07 EDT References: <7737@brl-adm.ARPA> <1186@ius2.cs.cmu.edu> <8174@utzoo.UUCP> <1027@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <22253@sun.uucp> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Reply-To: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 51 In article <22253@sun.uucp> guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes: >I quote from the manual, which you appear not to have read carefully: > > This system call will be eliminated when proper system sharing > mechanisms are implemented. *Users should not depend on the ^^^^^^ > memory sharing semantics of "vfork" as it will, in that case, > be made synonymous to "fork".* ("italics" mine) You appear not to have read my *POSTING* carefully. To summarize yet again: 1) /bin/csh is a system program, not a user program. It never says that system programs distributed by BSD may not use this call, and the BUGS entry of programs that use this call do not consider the fact that they use vfork a bug. 2) The man page implies that future versions of *BSD* may change vfork. Nowhere in the man page does it say that it is IMPLEMENTATION dependant. 3) Since the man page specifcally goes into painful detail how vfork works, the schemamtics of vfork have become part of the BSD 4.3 system interface. Any implementation that changes the meaning of vfork is not "FULL" BSD 4.3. ------------------------- All of the sources that I (and other people) have consulted say that vfork was implemented specifically for /bin/csh. Your arguments simply point to the source code of various programs/routines, like make and popen. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I (and several other people) have documentation that vfork was implemented specifically and originally for /bin/csh. Do us the favor of finding some documented evidence to the contrary if you believe otherwise. ---------------------------- This is beginning to turn into a religious war. When ad hominum attacks: > Sorry, xxxxx, but you are, as usual, wrong. ^^ ^^^^^ start creeping into the discussion, perhaps we should find something else to discuss, hmm? Unless one of us plans to write BSD 4.4, most of this becomes mostly pointless and moot anyway. =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Theodore Ts'o | mit-eddie!mit-athena!tytso | M.I.T., tytso@athena.mit.edu | P.h.D., 3 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139 | M.O.N.E.Y.! | =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+