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From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: bug in pclose(3)
Message-ID: <15100@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 88 00:15:23 GMT
References: <261@ecijmm.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 14

In article <261@ecijmm.UUCP> jmm@ecijmm.UUCP writes:
>in some circumstances [pclose] will hang forever. ...
>Is this behaviour common to all System 5 variations?  To BSD
>derivatives?  SunOS?  AIX?  Your favourite here?

It is partially fixed in 4.3BSD (and, one hopes, derivatives), where
pclose() will return -1 if the process has already been reaped.

>Is there even a good general solution?

4.4BSD will have a `wait4' or `waitfor' syscall, to wait for a
particular process (or for any process, if the given pid is 0).
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris