vfork() (was Re: RS6000 questions/comments)

[Melinda Shore]

In article <DERAADT.91Jun29025758 at fsa.cpsc.ucalgary.ca> deraadt at cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Theo de Raadt) writes:
>Sean, I'm disapointed in you.

[ code deleted ]

>That's the way that stdio works.

Yes, it is, but that isn't what's being discussed.  After a vfork, both
processes are sharing the same address space and data structures.  One
process can change the contents of a data structure without informing
the other, in the absence of an agreed-upon locking mechanism.  Do you
*really* want one process free()-ing all the FILE * out from under the
other process?

Fork works differently, of course, because the two processes are
(logically) not sharing the same address space.
-- 
                  Software longa, hardware brevis
Melinda Shore - Cornell Information Technologies - shore at tc.cornell.edu