What happens if the forked process blocks?

From PERL's point of view, backticks block until the process returns. But from the OS point of view processes are running concurrently.

If I know the PID (returned by open), I can kill the process after a certain amount of time has elasped by catching an ALRM signal. The signal will interrupt the control flow and the signal handler can kill the "timed out" process.

In reply to Re^2: Getting PID of process forked by backticks by paulski
in thread Getting PID of process forked by backticks by paulski

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