qfork() (again)

[Doug Gwyn]

Submitted-by: gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)

In article <17402 at cs.utexas.edu> michael at CS.UCLA.EDU (michael gersten) writes:
>Now, why was it removed? What is wrong with it?

vfork() wasn't removed; rather it was never added.  The base document
(/usr/group 1984 Standard) did not have vfork() but it did have fork().

There was no need for a second flavor of fork().  Standards and systems
in general should provide one sufficiently good way to perform a given
operation.  There were only two major arguments for vfork():  efficiency
of fork/exec, which is not a convincing argument, and that it provides a
form of sharing data space between two processes, which was judged to be
an undesirable form of providing such a facility.

Volume-Number: Volume 22, Number 86