> [discussion about nextpid and mpid]
> Any idea why this little guy is no longer a global?

not really.  thinking about it for a second, i can think of one
possiblity: a large number of programs at one time or another have had
security holes that related to predictable temporary file names.
having that pid information available should make the file names
easier to predict (for most methods of generating temporary file
names).

it's unclear to me why it's worthwhile to have the next pid to be
assigned (or last pid assigned) known.  I can't think of any _use_ of
this data (except possible to excite somebody sitting in front of
their machine, bored out of their mind, watching 'w'.  8-)



chris