From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200307091836.h69Ia2727769@augusta.math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Fork: useless and painful?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Jul 2003 12:19:28 MDT."
             <Pine.LNX.4.44.0307091217460.4388-100000@maxroach.lanl.gov>
From: Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>
Date: Wed,  9 Jul 2003 14:36:01 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: f0397a50-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> I'm hearing the claim that fork is "useless and painful" (from an IBM K42
> guy).
>
> Maybe it's just me, but I've always liked fork.

> Am I nuts?

Well, for what?  I find fork useful for all sorts of things  For
running another program, I never did quite figure out why there wasn't
a `spawn' library function that did the dance for you; I could see
fork() looking like an unnecessary extra step if that's all you ever
saw it do, but then I'd just point to pipelines of commands and the
simplicity of `backgrounding' a process as a counter example.

And, of course, rfork() is pretty cool, as Scott pointed out.

	- Dan C.