glenda.party
term% ls -F
term% pwd
$home/manuals/unix_v8/2/fork
term% cat index.txt
FORK(2)                       System Calls Manual                      FORK(2)



NAME
       fork - spawn new process

SYNOPSIS
       fork()

DESCRIPTION
       Fork is the only way new processes are created.  The new process's core
       image is a copy of that of the caller of fork.  The only distinction is
       that  the  value returned in the old (parent) process is the process ID
       of the new (child) process, while the value returned in the child is 0.
       Process  ID's  range  from  1  to  30,000.   The  process ID is used by
       wait(2).

       Files open before the fork are shared, and  have  a  common  read-write
       pointer.  In particular, this is the way that standard input and output
       files are passed and also how pipes are set up.

SEE ALSO
       wait(2), exec(2)

DIAGNOSTICS
       Returns -1 and fails to create a process if: there is  inadequate  swap
       space,  the  user  is not super-user and has too many processes, or the
       system's process table is full.  Only the super-user can take the  last
       process-table slot.



                                                                       FORK(2)