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causes
creation of a new process. The new process (child process) is an exact copy
of the calling process (parent process) except for the following: The
child process has a unique process ID. The child process has a different
parent process ID (i.e., the process ID of the parent process). The child
process has its own copy of the parent’s descriptors. These descriptors reference
the same underlying objects, so that, for instance, file pointers in file
objects are shared between the child and the parent, so that an on a descriptor
in the child process can affect a subsequent or by the parent. This descriptor
copying is also used by the shell to establish standard input and output
for newly created processes as well as to set up pipes. The child processes
resource utilizations are set to 0; see
Upon successful
completion, returns a value of 0 to the child process and returns the
process ID of the child process to the parent process. Otherwise, a value
of -1 is returned to the parent process, no child process is created, and
the global variable is set to indicate the error.
will fail and
no child process will be created if: The system-imposed limit on the total
number of processes under execution would be exceeded. This limit is configuration-dependent.
The system-imposed limit on the total number of processes under execution
by a single user would be exceeded. There is insufficient swap space for
the new process.
A function call appeared in
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