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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Can a parent process determine its child's status ?
Message-ID: <12215@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 23 Feb 90 08:58:04 GMT
References: <5090.25e135aa@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 6

In article <5090.25e135aa@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk> adh@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk writes:
>Does anyone know how a parent process can determine the status of one
>of its children if it *hasn't* executed a wait ?

Try using kill to send a "signal" number 0 to the process.
It's supposed to report success if the process is still alive.