From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: from milton.u.washington.edu ([128.95.136.1]) by archone.tamu.edu with SMTP id <18908>; Tue, 8 Oct 1991 10:10:14 -0500
Received: by milton.u.washington.edu
	(5.65/UW-NDC Revision: 2.1 ) id AA00411; Tue, 8 Oct 91 08:09:57 -0700
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1991 10:09:57 -0500
From: Donn Cave <donn@milton.u.washington.edu>
Message-Id: <9110081509.AA00411@milton.u.washington.edu>
To: rc@archone.tamu.edu
Subject: background processes

I have noticed that if rc only executes background commands (i.e. with
a trailing ampersand), it seems to accumulate large numbers of "defunct"
children.

Apparently the wait() call is only issued when waiting for a specific
process to complete - so if rc executes a trivial command in the foreground,
all the zombies finally get to die.

Would it be sensible to catch SIGCHLD for this - or would that invite
trouble with the signal-handling problems discussed last week?  (I confess
I didn't really understand that thread.)  Would it be better to just
wait() once for each prompt?

	Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington
	donn@cac.washington.edu