Zombies

[Barry.True]

In article <2647 at stl.stc.co.uk> dsr at stl.stc.co.uk (David Riches) writes:
>I have a program which spawns of a new program via the use of execl
>and communicates via pipes created using dup().
>
>When this new program dies it seems to leave a Zombied process
>with <defunct> as its name in the process table.
>
>Q:  Is the new program not dying properly?
>

No. But in order to avoid a zombie process the parent must wait on the
child. You might get around this by having a signal trap for the death of
child signal which executes an ISR which issues a wait(). When the wait()
is executed the zombie process created by the child's death will go away.