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From: wolfe@winston.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Zombies ???
Message-ID: <420@winston.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Dec-86 20:02:52 EST
Article-I.D.: winston.420
Posted: Tue Dec  9 20:02:52 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Dec-86 05:39:27 EST
References: <1327@brl-adm.ARPA> <165@hqda-ai.UUCP>
Reply-To: wolfe@winston.UUCP (Peter Wolfe)
Distribution: world
Organization: New Media Technologies, Burnaby, BC, CANADA
Lines: 14

Here is a question about zombie processes.  Are they an artifact of the
implementation or would UNIX break if one did it some other way?

Off hand, I can think of storing the {PID, STATUS} pair (or triple if
you want resource usage ala 4.[23] BSD) in queues for each parent to
read whenever they get around to it.  This would eliminate the need for
having process blocks hanging around until someone reads the exit
status.

Does anyone know of implementations that do not use zombies?
-- 
Peter Wolfe			| ..decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!winston!wolfe
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