while(1) {fork()}; is "better", as the version you mention will quit as soon as ...

marcosdumay · on Aug 20, 2014

Nope, it won't quit. In failure fork returns -1, what's still true...

But the forked processes will quit as soon as they are created. Thus, it won't work anyway.

dllthomas · on Aug 20, 2014

Parent said as soon as it is able to fork a new process, which still isn't quite right (it's the child that quits, as you say) but not the error you seem to be responding to.

marcosdumay · on Aug 21, 2014

He didn't say this when I replied.

dllthomas · on Aug 21, 2014

Ah, do you remember what it said?

TheLoneWolfling · on Aug 21, 2014

I got it swapped around initially:

"while(1) {fork()}; is "better", as the version you mention will quit as soon as it is not able to fork a new process."

or something similar

dllthomas · on Aug 21, 2014

Gotcha.

jimm · on Aug 20, 2014

Will it quit? A failed fork() will return -1, which is non-zero thus true in a boolean context. The while(fork()) {...} will run.

comex · on Aug 20, 2014

But it will stop when fork returns 0, i.e. in the child processes, making it non-exponential.