Removing <defunct> processes

[David J Bell]

I'm sure I've seen this question posed before. Probably recently.
Now *I* have the problem and regret not reading the responses! %$#%#^!

At one point in it's operation my application, under the user's control, 
opens an X-window shell. When the users terminates the shell with either
^D or exit, the window's process is left as <defunct>... 

When the shell is repeatedly accessed (the application is involved in
process control, and may run for many weeks), the defunct process id's
accumulate. Eventually, they'll fill my process limit.

How can I reliably remove them from the parent program?

Dave        dbell at cup.portal.com