In article <87y96sy1u8.fsf / squeaker.lickey.com>, Matt Armstrong wrote: > Jeremy Henty <jeremy / chaos.org.uk> writes: > >> In article <873cp128ap.fsf / squeaker.lickey.com>, Matt Armstrong wrote: >>> >>> system("thecommand &") >> >> This doesn't solve the problem, which was that the child process >> inherits a lock on the pstore archive. > > You are right. Question is, should system() pass on any file > descriptors beyond stdin/stdout/stderr to the child process? ??? Is this relevant? The problem is the child inheriting locks, not file descriptors. They are not the same. (At least, I thought they weren't.) > Forking child processes within a PStore transaction is probably just > bad practice. I agree! In fact I have learned that forking when in the middle of doing anything is perilous! Jeremy Henty