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From: richard@aiva.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: UNIX fork
Message-ID: <179@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 16-Oct-87 09:25:17 EST
Article-I.D.: aiva.179
Posted: Fri Oct 16 09:25:17 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 22:06:19 EST
References: <125@quick.COM> <246@tifsie.UUCP> <8904@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: richard@uk.ac.ed.aiva (Richard Tobin,E26 SB x206E,,4477106)
Organization: AI Applications Institute, Edinburgh University
Lines: 14
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:2701 comp.unix.wizards:5079

In article <8904@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>Vfork borrows the parent's *memory*; this does not include its
>kernel space information, such as file descriptors.  (`FILE *'s
>are indeed borrowed; the child is simply not supposed to muck about
>with them.)

Indeed, it would usually be pointless to muck about with them, because
they're going to disappear when the child execs another program.  The
things that are shared between the parent and child are just the things
that don't survive an exec.
-- 
Richard Tobin,                         JANET: R.Tobin@uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,             ARPA:  R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.                  UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin