Is System V.4 fork reliable?

[Rahul Dhesi]

All the applications programs that I know of assume that that there is
no point retrying a failed fork().  I've seen quite a few books about
programming in a UNIX environment, and I don't recall seeing a
recommendation that a failed fork() be retried.  (Yet authors usually
warn that a failed write() may succeed, and that a failed read() for
some types of descriptors should always be retried.)

So it seems that if fork() can fail but be likely to succeed if
retried, either AT&T needs to hold a MASSIVE publicity campaign telling
all these people (including its own staff programmers, who sometimes
write books and articles about UNIX programming) that they have been
writing buggy code all these years; OR it needs to modify its kernel.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi%cirrusl at oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com>
UUCP:  oliveb!cirrusl!dhesi