Should I be terminating a forked child process with exit()?
c, fork, parent-child
Solution
Usually the child either has it's own code with an `exit` or calls one of the `exec` functions to replace its process's image with another program. So the exit is okay. But the parent and child could execute at least some of the same code, something like this:
int pid = fork();
if (pid < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Fork Failed");
exit(-1);
} else if (pid == 0) {
// child code
} else {
// parent code
}
// shared code
Problem
I'm working on some stuff using `fork()` in C. This is my first contact with the concept of forking processes. Basically, I have something like this: ``` int pid; pid = fork(); if (pid < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Fork Failed"); exit(-1); } else if (pid == 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Inside child %d\n", getpid()); // do some other stuff exit(0); } else { fprintf(stderr, "Inside parent %d\n", getpid()); } ``` Before, I hadn't put the `exit(0)` in the child process' code. I was getting seemingly tons of duplicate processes. I added the `exit(0)` and now I'm only spawning one child. However, I want to know if this is proper practise or just a bandaid. Is this the correct thing to do. How should a child "stop" when its done?