WAITing for specific process

[L. Cole]

The wait() system call returns the process id of zombie child, but a
process may have more than one of these outstanding at a time. Wait()
is free (it appears) to return the pid of any of these zombie children.
What if you want to wait for a particular child? For example, one might
pass the pid of a process to be waited for. It's clear that the way
it works now is useful, but there times it really gets in the way.
An example of this is the library functions popen/pclose, which
generate and wait for a child, possibly discarding a zombie that was
to be waited for later. Any suggestions as to what to do or why this
facility isn't provided?

				Chris Scussel
				ihnp4!ihuxj!tosca
				Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL