The following question was also posted to usenet's comp.lang.perl.misc, sorry for the duplication, but I really need some input on this.

While checking the syntax of the kill() function I noticed a difference between the perlipc and the perlfunc manual pages . It regards the way to kill a process group.

quoting perlipc (item "Signals"):
# Sending a signal to a negative process ID means that you
# send the signal to the entire Unix process-group.
Also all examples in perlipc seem to advocate this as the default way to do this. 
quoting perlfunc (item "kill"):
# Unlike in the shell, if SIGNAL is negative, it kills 
# process groups instead of processes. (On System V, a
# negative PROCESS number will also kill process groups,
# but that's not portable.)

Does this mean the things described in perlipc only work on SysV and are not portable? if so how does this work on my linux box? Has there been a syntax change for the kill() function and is one of both pages not up2date? Or is one of both pages plain wrong!??

Also if using signal 0 (zero) to poll processes how do you poll the group with a negative signal!?

Please enlighten me

--
Jaap Karssenberg || Pardus (Larus)? <pardus@cpan.org>
>>>> Zoidberg: So many memories, so many strange fluids gushing out of patients' bodies.... <<<<

In reply to kill(9, -9) or kill(-9, 9) ? by Pardus

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