Re (tilly) 1: how to do things while waiting?

Look up waitpid. Alternately you might want to try:

$SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';
[download]

and not worry about your kids. (On most Unix platforms I believe this will cause them to be auto-reaped without using Perl's unreliable signals.)

Comment on Re (tilly) 1: how to do things while waiting? Download Code

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(tye)Re: how to do things while waiting? by tye (Sage) on May 17, 2001 at 02:36 UTC
No, that only works on SVR4-based versions of Unix and not on BSD-based versions of Unix. (Now that Sun has converted to SVR4-based, you might be able to argue "most" is appropriate, but I won't.) - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")	[reply]
Re (tilly) 3: how to do things while waiting? by tilly (Archbishop) on May 17, 2001 at 02:56 UTC
Quoting from perlipc for version 5.005_03: `On most UNIX platforms, the CHLD (sometimes also known as CLD) signal has special behavior with respect to a value of 'IGNORE'. Setting $SIG{CHLD} to 'IGNORE' on such a platform has the effect of not creating zombie processes when the parent process fails to wait() on its child processes (i.e. child processes are automatically reaped). Calling wait() with $SIG{CHLD} set to 'IGNORE' usually returns -1 on such platforms.` [download] So if you don't like my wording, you should check whether it is still needed and then send in a documentation patch.	[reply] [d/l]