Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Aug 2005, Daniel Berger wrote:
>
> > Ara.T.Howard wrote:
> >
> >> it does - there is a win32-fork - guess you can't exec then?  i don't
> >> really
> >> know the semantic difference between win fork and nix fork.
> >>
> >> thanks alot for the example - i've faced this same issue before and gave
> >> up.
> >> ;-)
> >>
> >> -a
> >
> > There is no win32-fork.  There's an implementation of fork in win32-process
> > that creatively wraps CreateProcess().  Windows has no fork/exec, though it
> > has CreateProcess() and 16 different flavors of spawn().
>
> right-o.  i guess what wondering what the semantics of this wrapper are - do
> fd's get inherited, do parents need to reap chilren, etc.  it seems that
> something called CreateProcess)() must be alot like fork/exec, if not what's
> the difference.  i realize this is ot and i'm googling it now - but wondered
> if anyone might comment on any of this specific to ruby or not.

A pretty good guide on the differences can be found at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnucmg/html/UCMGch01.asp

It's a pretty good guide in general when trying to write portable code
between Windows and Unix.

Regards,

Dan