Does a zombie have a "valid pid"

[brnstnd at stealth.acf.nyu.edu]

In article <1990May25.001614.23294 at athena.mit.edu> jik at athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
> In article <639 at mecky.UUCP>, walter at mecky.UUCP (Walter Mecky) writes:
> |> I think, a process in zombie state has no "valid pid" and kill(2) should
> |> return -1. Am I wrong ?
>   Yes.  A zombie process is still a process, even if it's in a weird
> state.  As long as that's true, it's still going to have a PID
> associated with it, and therefore signals sent to it are going to work.

You're correct up to the last phrase. Signals sent to it aren't going to
``work,'' in the sense that they won't invoke the usual signal handler;
QUIT won't dump a zombie. They'll be delivered, but they won't work.

---Dan