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    Fork System Call

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    rose marine
    Fork allows a process to create a child process that is an exact duplicate. The fork call returns 0 to the child and the child's PID to the parent. Both processes continue execution from the next instruction. Multiple fork calls can create a tree of processes where each fork doubles the number. An example prints "Hello world!" twice by having the parent and child both run that code after a fork. Another prints "hello" 8 times by having 3 levels of forks, resulting in 2^3 = 8 processes.

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    Fork System Call

    Uploaded by

    rose marine
    391 views3 pages
    Fork allows a process to create a child process that is an exact duplicate. The fork call returns 0 to the child and the child's PID to the parent. Both processes continue execution from the next instruction. Multiple fork calls can create a tree of processes where each fork doubles the number. An example prints "Hello world!" twice by having the parent and child both run that code after a fork. Another prints "hello" 8 times by having 3 levels of forks, resulting in 2^3 = 8 processes.

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    fork System Call

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    Fork allows a process to create a child process that is an exact duplicate. The fork call returns 0 to the child and the child's PID to the parent. Both processes continue execution from the next instruction. Multiple fork calls can create a tree of processes where each fork doubles the number. An example prints "Hello world!" twice by having the parent and child both run that code after a fork. Another prints "hello" 8 times by having 3 levels of forks, resulting in 2^3 = 8 processes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    391 views3 pages

    Fork System Call

    Uploaded by

    rose marine
    Fork allows a process to create a child process that is an exact duplicate. The fork call returns 0 to the child and the child's PID to the parent. Both processes continue execution from the next instruction. Multiple fork calls can create a tree of processes where each fork doubles the number. An example prints "Hello world!" twice by having the parent and child both run that code after a fork. Another prints "hello" 8 times by having 3 levels of forks, resulting in 2^3 = 8 processes.

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    fork() in C

    Fork system call is used for creating a new process, which is called child process, which runs
    concurrently with the process that makes the fork() call (parent process). After a new child
    process is created, both processes will execute the next instruction following the fork() system
    call. A child process uses the same pc(program counter), same CPU registers, same open files
    which use in the parent process.

    It takes no parameters and returns an integer value. Below are different values returned by fork().

    Negative Value: creation of a child process was unsuccessful.


    Zero: Returned to the newly created child process.
    Positive value: Returned to parent or caller. The value contains process ID of newly created child
    process.

    Please note that the above programs don’t compile in Windows environment.

    1. Predict the Output of the following program:.

    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <sys/types.h>
    #include <unistd.h>
    int main()
    {
      
        // make two process which run same
        // program after this instruction
        fork();
      
        printf("Hello world!\n");
        return 0;
    }

    2. Output:
    3. Hello world!
    4. Hello world!

    Calculate number of times hello is printed:

    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <sys/types.h>
    int main()
    {
        fork();
        fork();
        fork();
        printf("hello\n");
        return 0;
    }

    5. Output:
    6. hello
    7. hello
    8. hello
    9. hello
    10. hello
    11. hello
    12. hello
    13. hello

    The number of times ‘hello’ is printed is equal to number of process created. Total Number
    of Processes = 2n, where n is number of fork system calls. So here n = 3, 23 = 8

    Let us put some label names for the three lines:

    fork (); // Line 1


    fork (); // Line 2
    fork (); // Line 3

    L1 // There will be 1 child process


    / \ // created by line 1.
    L2 L2 // There will be 2 child processes
    / \ / \ // created by line 2
    L3 L3 L3 L3 // There will be 4 child processes
    // created by line 3
    So there are total eight processes (new child processes and one original process).

    If we want to represent the relationship between the processes as a tree hierarchy it would be
    the following:

    The main process: P0


    Processes created by the 1st fork: P1
    Processes created by the 2nd fork: P2, P3
    Processes created by the 3rd fork: P4, P5, P6, P7

    P0
    / | \
    P1 P4 P2
    / \ \
    P3 P6 P5
    /
    P7

    Lab Task:
    Submit the two examples of fork system call of your choice with
    description and screenshot of running code.

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