I come across few questions:
1) A process has 3 threads, if process calls fork(), will the new process has the 3 threads as well?
2) A process has 3 threads, if one thread calls fork(), will the new process has the 3 threads as well?
3) Are there any shared data between the threads in different 2 processes in the above cases?
The new process will have ONE thread [a copy of the thread that called fork] according to this:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/...ions/fork.html
1) and 2) are essentially the same - all processes have at least one thread - the main thread - in almost all aspects, the main thread is equal to other threads. The only real difference is that a child thread (aka non-main thread) does not cause the whole program to exit if it returns.
3) Data and file descriptors are shared between the two processes. Data will be in copy-on-write state, so if either process writes to data [even if the data is not ACTUALLY changed, say you write 0 to a variable that was 0 before], it will be given its own copy of the data. So essentially the two processes will have their own data.
--
Mats
Compilers can produce warnings - make the compiler programmers happy: Use them!
Please don't PM me for help - and no, I don't do help over instant messengers.
Actually, it depends on the OS and threading model.
If you're running Solaris and use the Solaris threads API (as opposed to the POSIX threads API), fork() will duplicate ALL threads in the process. If you only want to duplicate the calling thread in this situation, call fork1(). See the Solaris fork(2) man page.
Solaris 10 got it's act together and made Posix behavior the default. Before 10, you only got Posix behavior if linking with -lpthread.
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5167/fork-2?a=view
gg
