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 (return-path <dot@dotat.at>); Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:38:30 +0100
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:38:29 +0100
From: Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>
To: George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org>
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Subject: Re: [TUHS] "Fork considered harmful"
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George Michaelson <ggm@algebras.org> wrote:
> On Apr 10, 2019, at 4:06 PM, Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Any view on this? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/a-fork-in-the-road/
>
> fork() and the various exec() flavours had this single compelling
> story for me: the stdin/stdout/stderr *and all other open I/O* was
> inherited across the process boundary. This alone made writing code
> significantly easier.

Mark Wooding had an insightful observation in response to that paper: it's
relatively common in Unix to have oblivious intermediaries where it is
important that they pass on things like file descriptors and signal
dispositions. How would you implement nohup() in a spawn-based system?

[ Yorkbox-related tangent: the other day I was trying to find out more
about the JANET NRS (the hosts.txt-alike with names in uk.ac.cam format)
and all I could find out is that it was hosted at Salford on Pr1me
computers https://www.uknof.org.uk/uknof7/Reid-History.pdf ... the reason
for looking because I'm no longer providing secondary DNS for Salford. ]

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot@dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Fair Isle: East 2 or 3, veering south 5 or 6. Slight, becoming moderate.
Occasional rain or drizzle. Moderate or good.