Name
fork
Synopsis
fork
Spawns a child process that executes the code
immediately following the fork
call until the process is terminated (usually with an exit). The child process runs parallel
to the parent process and shares all the parent’s variables and
open filehandles. The function returns the child pid to the parent
process and 0 to the child
process on success. If it fails, it returns the undefined value to
the parent process, and no child process is created. If you
fork your child processes,
you’ll have to wait on their
zombies when they die. (See the wait
function for more information.) The fork function is unlikely to be
implemented on any operating system not resembling Unix, unless it
purports POSIX compliance.