The trouble with fork() (Re: IBM PC prehistory)

[Peter da Silva]

In article <11969 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
> In article <DW31DR7xds13 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> >Wouldn't it be nice if there was a sanctioned P1003 subset that replaced
> >fork() with a combined fork()/exec() call (spawn?). Or just an addition
                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >of spawn to the standard as an alternative process creation mechanism:
   ^^^^^^^^                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >This would radically improve the performance of non-UNIX POSIX systems,
> >without compromising the capability of the standard...

> Wrong; fork() is more flexible than spawn(), and this is thoroughly
> exploited by UNIX applications.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

Oops. Wrong program.

Anyway, look at the second sentence above. Most cases of fork/exec could
be replaced by a simple spawn call, making the majority of programs that
didn't need fork/exec more efficient.

How do you feel about adding coroutines to C?
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