Hi guys, On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Enrico Granata <[email protected]> wrote: > I believe his question actually sounds like: why does Linux need two system > calls to start running a new program? Wouldn't it be simpler to do this the > way Win32 does it: a CreateProcess() system call that actually loads a NEW > program in NEW process?
So fork is actually the heavyweight variant. It copies the page tables of the calling process. If you know that the fork will be followed by an exec, then you're better off to use the lightweight version of fork, called vfork, which does not copy the page tables of the calling process. Also keep in mind that it's perfectly legal to call fork without calling exec. And, fork and vfork are really just front-ends for clone which is the function that deals with all of the variants... -- Dave Hylands Shuswap, BC, Canada http://www.DaveHylands.com/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to [email protected] Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
