Checking for new mail (and kill

[iv at hal6000.UUCP]

/* ---------- "Re: Checking for new mail (and kill" ----------
Seth Robertson		seth at ctr.columbia.edu:
> Sure,  Modify checkmail so that does the following:
> 
> 	if (kill(ppid,0))
> 	  exit(1);
> 
> So every so often, it checks to see if its parent is around.  If
> it isn't, it performs honorable suicide.
|*------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff d'Arcy		jdarcy at encore.com
>> This is an approach I'd tried earlier (I used SIGCHLD, actually) and
>> it worked OK, but I wasn't comfortable with the possibility that the
>> parent might try to do something with the signal instead of dropping
>> it.  That's when I thought of comparing initial vs. current PPIDs.
\* End of text from hal6000:comp.unix.xenix ------------------

Actually, "kill(ppid,0)" does NOT send a signal to `ppid'.  It merely 
goes through all the checks for errors, and then returns OK / E???? .
It's a great way of checking to see if a process still exists.  We use
such checks in resource locking code (is the owner of the lock still
running?)  No more dead lock-file problems.
----
IV  (aka John Elliott IV)	 Domain: iv at hal6000.Tandy.COM
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