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PERLFORK(1)	       Perl Programmers Reference Guide 	   PERLFORK(1)



NAME
       perlfork - Perls fork() emulation

SYNOPSIS
	   NOTE:  As of the 5.8.0 release, fork() emulation has considerably
	   matured.  However, there are still a few known bugs and differences
	   from real fork() that might affect you.  See the "BUGS" and
	   "CAVEATS AND LIMITATIONS" sections below.

       Perl provides a fork() keyword that corresponds to the Unix system call
       of the same name.  On most Unix-like platforms where the fork() system
       call is available, Perls fork() simply calls it.

       On some platforms such as Windows where the fork() system call is not
       available, Perl can be built to emulate fork() at the interpreter
       level.  While the emulation is designed to be as compatible as possible
       with the real fork() at the level of the Perl program, there are cer
       tain important differences that stem from the fact that all the pseudo
       child "processes" created this way live in the same real process as far
       as the operating system is concerned.

       This document provides a general overview of the capabilities and limi
       tations of the fork() emulation.  Note that the issues discussed here
       are not applicable to platforms where a real fork() is available and
       Perl has been configured to use it.

DESCRIPTION
       The fork() emulation is implemented at the level of the Perl inter
       preter.	What this means in general is that running fork() will actu
       ally clone the running interpreter and all its state, and run the
       cloned interpreter in a separate thread, beginning execution in the new
       thread just after the point where the fork() was called in the parent.
       We will refer to the thread that implements this child "process" as the
       pseudo-process.

       To the Perl program that called fork(), all this is designed to be
       transparent.  The parent returns from the fork() with a pseudo-process
       ID that can be subsequently used in any process manipulation functions;
       the child returns from the fork() with a value of 0 to signify that it
       is the child pseudo-process.

       Behavior of other Perl features in forked pseudo-processes

       Most Perl features behave in a natural way within pseudo-processes.

       $$ or $PROCESS_ID
	       This special variable is correctly set to the pseudo-process
	       ID.  It can be used to identify pseudo-processes within a par
	       ticular session.  Note that this value is subject to recycling
	       if any pseudo-processes are launched after others have been
	       wait()-ed on.

       %ENV    Each pseudo-process maintains its own virtual environment.
	       Modifications to %ENV affect the virtual environment, and are
	       only visible within that pseudo-process, and in any processes
	       (or pseudo-processes) launched from it.

       chdir() and all other builtins that accept filenames
	       Each pseudo-process maintains its own virtual idea of the cur
	       rent directory.	Modifications to the current directory using
	       chdir() are only visible within that pseudo-process, and in any
	       processes (or pseudo-processes) launched from it.  All file and
	       directory accesses from the pseudo-process will correctly map
	       the virtual working directory to the real working directory
	       appropriately.

       wait() and waitpid()
	       wait() and waitpid() can be passed a pseudo-process ID returned
	       by fork().  These calls will properly wait for the termination
	       of the pseudo-process and return its status.

       kill()  kill() can be used to terminate a pseudo-process by passing it
	       the ID returned by fork().  This should not be used except
	       under dire circumstances, because the operating system may not
	       guarantee integrity of the process resources when a running
	       thread is terminated.  Note that using kill() on a pseudo-pro
	       cess() may typically cause memory leaks, because the thread
	       that implements the pseudo-process does not get a chance to
	       clean up its resources.

       exec()  Calling exec() within a pseudo-process actually spawns the
	       requested executable in a separate process and waits for it to
	       complete before exiting with the same exit status as that pro
	       cess.  This means that the process ID reported within the run
	       ning executable will be different from what the earlier Perl
	       fork() might have returned.  Similarly, any process manipula
	       tion functions applied to the ID returned by fork() will affect
	       the waiting pseudo-process that called exec(), not the real
	       process it is waiting for after the exec().

       exit()  exit() always exits just the executing pseudo-process, after
	       automatically wait()-ing for any outstanding child pseudo-pro
	       cesses.	Note that this means that the process as a whole will
	       not exit unless all running pseudo-processes have exited.

       Open handles to files, directories and network sockets
	       All open handles are dup()-ed in pseudo-processes, so that
	       closing any handles in one process does not affect the others.
	       See below for some limitations.

       Resource limits

       In the eyes of the operating system, pseudo-processes created via the
       fork() emulation are simply threads in the same process.  This means
       that any process-level limits imposed by the operating system apply to
       all pseudo-processes taken together.  This includes any limits imposed
       by the operating system on the number of open file, directory and
       socket handles, limits on disk space usage, limits on memory size, lim
       its on CPU utilization etc.

       Killing the parent process

       If the parent process is killed (either using Perls kill() builtin, or
       using some external means) all the pseudo-processes are killed as well,
       and the whole process exits.

       Lifetime of the parent process and pseudo-processes

       During the normal course of events, the parent process and every
       pseudo-process started by it will wait for their respective pseudo-
       children to complete before they exit.  This means that the parent and
       every pseudo-child created by it that is also a pseudo-parent will only
       exit after their pseudo-children have exited.

       A way to mark a pseudo-processes as running detached from their parent
       (so that the parent would not have to wait() for them if it doesnt
       want to) will be provided in future.

       CAVEATS AND LIMITATIONS


       BEGIN blocks
	       The fork() emulation will not work entirely correctly when
	       called from within a BEGIN block.  The forked copy will run the
	       contents of the BEGIN block, but will not continue parsing the
	       source stream after the BEGIN block.  For example, consider the
	       following code:

		   BEGIN {
		       fork and exit;	       # fork child and exit the parent
		       print "inner\n";
		   }
		   print "outer\n";

	       This will print:

		   inner

	       rather than the expected:

		   inner
		   outer

	       This limitation arises from fundamental technical difficulties
	       in cloning and restarting the stacks used by the Perl parser in
	       the middle of a parse.

       Open filehandles
	       Any filehandles open at the time of the fork() will be
	       dup()-ed.  Thus, the files can be closed independently in the
	       parent and child, but beware that the dup()-ed handles will
	       still share the same seek pointer.  Changing the seek position
	       in the parent will change it in the child and vice-versa.  One
	       can avoid this by opening files that need distinct seek point
	       ers separately in the child.

       Forking pipe open() not yet implemented
	       The "open(FOO, "|-")" and "open(BAR, "-|")" constructs are not
	       yet implemented.  This limitation can be easily worked around
	       in new code by creating a pipe explicitly.  The following exam
	       ple shows how to write to a forked child:

		   # simulate open(FOO, "|-")
		   sub pipe_to_fork ($) {
		       my $parent = shift;
		       pipe my $child, $parent or die;
		       my $pid = fork();
		       die "fork() failed: $!" unless defined $pid;
		       if ($pid) {
			   close $child;
		       }
		       else {
			   close $parent;
			   open(STDIN, "<&=" . fileno($child)) or die;
		       }
		       $pid;
		   }

		   if (pipe_to_fork(FOO)) {
		       # parent
		       print FOO "pipe_to_fork\n";
		       close FOO;
		   }
		   else {
		       # child
		       while () { print; }
		       exit(0);
		   }

	       And this one reads from the child:

		   # simulate open(FOO, "-|")
		   sub pipe_from_fork ($) {
		       my $parent = shift;
		       pipe $parent, my $child or die;
		       my $pid = fork();
		       die "fork() failed: $!" unless defined $pid;
		       if ($pid) {
			   close $child;
		       }
		       else {
			   close $parent;
			   open(STDOUT, ">&=" . fileno($child)) or die;
		       }
		       $pid;
		   }

		   if (pipe_from_fork(BAR)) {
		       # parent
		       while () { print; }
		       close BAR;
		   }
		   else {
		       # child
		       print "pipe_from_fork\n";
		       exit(0);
		   }

	       Forking pipe open() constructs will be supported in future.

       Global state maintained by XSUBs
	       External subroutines (XSUBs) that maintain their own global
	       state may not work correctly.  Such XSUBs will either need to
	       maintain locks to protect simultaneous access to global data
	       from different pseudo-processes, or maintain all their state on
	       the Perl symbol table, which is copied naturally when fork() is
	       called.	A callback mechanism that provides extensions an
	       opportunity to clone their state will be provided in the near
	       future.

       Interpreter embedded in larger application
	       The fork() emulation may not behave as expected when it is exe
	       cuted in an application which embeds a Perl interpreter and
	       calls Perl APIs that can evaluate bits of Perl code.  This
	       stems from the fact that the emulation only has knowledge about
	       the Perl interpreters own data structures and knows nothing
	       about the containing applications state.  For example, any
	       state carried on the applications own call stack is out of
	       reach.

       Thread-safety of extensions
	       Since the fork() emulation runs code in multiple threads,
	       extensions calling into non-thread-safe libraries may not work
	       reliably when calling fork().  As Perls threading support
	       gradually becomes more widely adopted even on platforms with a
	       native fork(), such extensions are expected to be fixed for
	       thread-safety.

BUGS
	      Having pseudo-process IDs be negative integers breaks down for
	       the integer "-1" because the wait() and waitpid() functions
	       treat this number as being special.  The tacit assumption in
	       the current implementation is that the system never allocates a
	       thread ID of 1 for user threads.  A better representation for
	       pseudo-process IDs will be implemented in future.

	      In certain cases, the OS-level handles created by the pipe(),
	       socket(), and accept() operators are apparently not duplicated
	       accurately in pseudo-processes.	This only happens in some sit
	       uations, but where it does happen, it may result in deadlocks
	       between the read and write ends of pipe handles, or inability
	       to send or receive data across socket handles.

	      This document may be incomplete in some respects.

AUTHOR
       Support for concurrent interpreters and the fork() emulation was imple
       mented by ActiveState, with funding from Microsoft Corporation.

       This document is authored and maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy
       .

SEE ALSO
       "fork" in perlfunc, perlipc



perl v5.8.8			  2008-04-25			   PERLFORK(1)




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