From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2004-11-29T18:17:34+09:00
Subject: Re: process fire and forget?

Hi,

In message "Re: process fire and forget?"
    on Mon, 29 Nov 2004 18:14:30 +0900, Michael Ulm <michael.ulm@isis-papyrus.com> writes:

|Is there a ruby way of firing up a process and then
|forget about it?

--------------------------------------------------------- Process#detach
     Process.detach(pid)   => thread
------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Some operating systems retain the status of terminated child
     processes until the parent collects that status (normally using
     some variant of +wait()+. If the parent never collects this status,
     the child stays around as a _zombie_ process. +Process::detach+
     prevents this by setting up a separate Ruby thread whose sole job
     is to reap the status of the process _pid_ when it terminates. Use
     +detach+ only when you do not intent to explicitly wait for the
     child to terminate. +detach+ only checks the status periodically
     (currently once each second).