how to avoid a <defunct> process?

TKSpitty has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Monks, In a certain script I am starting a process in the background using fork and I catch the pid. The process I started also starts new child processes itself. When I try to kill this process (I use kill 2, then kill 9), it changes into a <defunct> process and the weird thing is, when I check whether it's alive with kill 0, it returns true... I don't know much about process management in Perl. Can anyone tell me how I can avoid getting a defunct process when I kill a forked process? Any help is appreciated, Martijn

Comment on how to avoid a <defunct> process?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: how to avoid a <defunct> process? by Fletch (Bishop) on Oct 14, 2004 at 12:45 UTC
`perldoc perlipc` [download] `perldoc -f waitpid` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: how to avoid a <defunct> process? by tstock (Curate) on Oct 14, 2004 at 13:52 UTC
perlipc should give you all the help you need; and if you want to disregard the forked children signal then set `$SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';` [download] Tiago	[reply] [d/l]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom