On 09-Apr-98 Greg A. Woods wrote:

>> It's the party who arbitrarily decides to alter the defined behavior who
>> is pursuing "bad programming practice" there, unless of course there's a
>> "good reason" -- and none was articulated in this case.  (Or none that
>> I've seen.)
>
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean here.  Are you saying there was no
> reason given for the half-baked vfork() that was in 4.4BSD?

Actually, I've just seen one reason.  Whether it's "good" or not depends on
your philosophy.

CSRG stated POSIX compliance as a goal for 4.4BSD, and vfork() is not in the
POSIX specification.  It's regarded as a BSD quirk.

In practice, though, it's everywhere.*  Even Linux has it (and oddly, the Linux
implementation is identical to 4.4BSD!).

*I suppose you'll say, "Like cockroaches!"


--Jim Howard  <jiho@mail.c-zone.net>


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E-Mail: jiho@mail.c-zone.net
Date: 09-Apr-98
Time: 11:25:49

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