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From: "Gary R. Van Sickle" <g DOT r DOT vansickle AT worldnet DOT att DOT net>
To: <cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: fork() idea
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 00:53:10 -0600
Message-ID: <NCBBIHCHBLCMLBLOBONKOEMNCJAA.g.r.vansickle@worldnet.att.net>
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What about avoiding fork() entirely?  I'm of course not talking about a general
solution, but take sh for example; would it be possible to write a shell that
simply never forks (or has it already been done)?  That alone would be a massive
win.  Seems that one could simply (he sez) maintain a state stack where each
time you see a "var=$(echo something | somethingelse)", instead of forking you'd
just push a new shell state on the stack, spawn the commands, do the piping and
other shell-things in the same process, pop the stack and Bob's yer uncle, no
fork overhead.

Or am I missing something fundamental?

--
Gary R. Van Sickle
Brewer.  Patriot.