andrew@ramona.Cary.NC.US (Andrew Ernest) (02/02/90)
From: andrew@ramona.Cary.NC.US (Andrew Ernest) There's a UNIX system in existence that has (or at least had) a bug (IMHO) where fork() does not do the equivalent of alarm(0) for the child process. The AT&T docs seem quite clear on the point that children don't inherit the parent's alarm() value: "The time left until an alarm clock signal is reset to 0." But what about 1003.1? On page 49 it says "Pending alarms are cleared for the child process." What exactly does "pending" mean in this sentence? Pending alarm signals (from alarms that have "gone off") that haven't already been delivered? Why is alarm plural otherwise? So, is it acceptable for a POSIX-conforming system to leave the set alarm time alone so both the parent and child get the signal when the alarm goes off? This makes forking safely so messy that I seriously doubt it. It breaks many existing interactive programs. -- Andrew Ernest <andrew@ramona.Cary.NC.US> Volume-Number: Volume 18, Number 36