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perlfork (1)
  • >> perlfork (1) ( Solaris man: Команды и прикладные программы пользовательского уровня )
  • perlfork (1) ( Разные man: Команды и прикладные программы пользовательского уровня )
  • 
    
    

    NAME

         perlfork - Perl's fork() emulation
    
    
    

    SYNOPSIS

         Perl provides a fork() keyword that corresponds to the Unix
         system call of the same name.  On most Unix-like platforms
         where the fork() system call is available, Perl's fork()
         simply calls it.
    
         On some platforms such as Windows where the fork() system
         call is not available, Perl can be built to emulate fork()
         at the interpreter level.  While the emulation is designed
         to be as compatible as possible with the real fork() at the
         the level of the Perl program, there are certain important
         differences that stem from the fact that all the pseudo
         child "processes" created this way live in the same real
         process as far as the operating system is concerned.
    
         This document provides a general overview of the
         capabilities and limitations of the fork() emulation.  Note
         that the issues discussed here are not applicable to
         platforms where a real fork() is available and Perl has been
         configured to use it.
    
    
    

    DESCRIPTION

         The fork() emulation is implemented at the level of the Perl
         interpreter.  What this means in general is that running
         fork() will actually clone the running interpreter and all
         its state, and run the cloned interpreter in a separate
         thread, beginning execution in the new thread just after the
         point where the fork() was called in the parent.  We will
         refer to the thread that implements this child "process" as
         the pseudo-process.
    
         To the Perl program that called fork(), all this is designed
         to be transparent.  The parent returns from the fork() with
         a pseudo-process ID that can be subsequently used in any
         process manipulation functions; the child returns from the
         fork() with a value of `0' to signify that it is the child
         pseudo-process.
    
         Behavior of other Perl features in forked pseudo-processes
    
         Most Perl features behave in a natural way within pseudo-
         processes.
    
         $$ or $PROCESS_ID
                 This special variable is correctly set to the
                 pseudo-process ID.  It can be used to identify
                 pseudo-processes within a particular session.  Note
                 that this value is subject to recycling if any
                 pseudo-processes are launched after others have been
                 wait()-ed on.
    
         %ENV    Each pseudo-process maintains its own virtual
                 enviroment.  Modifications to %ENV affect the
                 virtual environment, and are only visible within
                 that pseudo-process, and in any processes (or
                 pseudo-processes) launched from it.
    
         chdir() and all other builtins that accept filenames
                 Each pseudo-process maintains its own virtual idea
                 of the current directory.  Modifications to the
                 current directory using chdir() are only visible
                 within that pseudo-process, and in any processes (or
                 pseudo-processes) launched from it.  All file and
                 directory accesses from the pseudo-process will
                 correctly map the virtual working directory to the
                 real working directory appropriately.
    
         wait() and waitpid()
                 wait() and waitpid() can be passed a pseudo-process
                 ID returned by fork().  These calls will properly
                 wait for the termination of the pseudo-process and
                 return its status.
    
         kill()  kill() can be used to terminate a pseudo-process by
                 passing it the ID returned by fork().  This should
                 not be used except under dire circumstances, because
                 the operating system may not guarantee integrity of
                 the process resources when a running thread is
                 terminated.  Note that using kill() on a pseudo-
                 process() may typically cause memory leaks, because
                 the thread that implements the pseudo-process does
                 not get a chance to clean up its resources.
    
         exec()  Calling exec() within a pseudo-process actually
                 spawns the requested executable in a separate
                 process and waits for it to complete before exiting
                 with the same exit status as that process.  This
                 means that the process ID reported within the
                 running executable will be different from what the
                 earlier Perl fork() might have returned.  Similarly,
                 any process manipulation functions applied to the ID
                 returned by fork() will affect the waiting pseudo-
                 process that called exec(), not the real process it
                 is waiting for after the exec().
    
         exit()  exit() always exits just the executing pseudo-
                 process, after automatically wait()-ing for any
                 outstanding child pseudo-processes.  Note that this
                 means that the process as a whole will not exit
                 unless all running pseudo-processes have exited.
    
         Open handles to files, directories and network sockets
                 All open handles are dup()-ed in pseudo-processes,
                 so that closing any handles in one process does not
                 affect the others.  See below for some limitations.
    
         Resource limits
    
         In the eyes of the operating system, pseudo-processes
         created via the fork() emulation are simply threads in the
         same process.  This means that any process-level limits
         imposed by the operating system apply to all pseudo-
         processes taken together.  This includes any limits imposed
         by the operating system on the number of open file,
         directory and socket handles, limits on disk space usage,
         limits on memory size, limits on CPU utilization etc.
    
         Killing the parent process
    
         If the parent process is killed (either using Perl's kill()
         builtin, or using some external means) all the pseudo-
         processes are killed as well, and the whole process exits.
    
         Lifetime of the parent process and pseudo-processes
    
         During the normal course of events, the parent process and
         every pseudo-process started by it will wait for their
         respective pseudo-children to complete before they exit.
         This means that the parent and every pseudo-child created by
         it that is also a pseudo-parent will only exit after their
         pseudo-children have exited.
    
         A way to mark a pseudo-processes as running detached from
         their parent (so that the parent would not have to wait()
         for them if it doesn't want to) will be provided in future.
    
         CAVEATS AND LIMITATIONS
    
         BEGIN blocks
                 The fork() emulation will not work entirely
                 correctly when called from within a BEGIN block.
                 The forked copy will run the contents of the BEGIN
                 block, but will not continue parsing the source
                 stream after the BEGIN block.  For example, consider
                 the following code:
    
                     BEGIN {
                         fork and exit;          # fork child and exit the parent
                         print "inner\n";
                     }
                     print "outer\n";
    
                 This will print:
                     inner
    
                 rather than the expected:
    
                     inner
                     outer
    
                 This limitation arises from fundamental technical
                 difficulties in cloning and restarting the stacks
                 used by the Perl parser in the middle of a parse.
    
         Open filehandles
                 Any filehandles open at the time of the fork() will
                 be dup()-ed.  Thus, the files can be closed
                 independently in the parent and child, but beware
                 that the dup()-ed handles will still share the same
                 seek pointer.  Changing the seek position in the
                 parent will change it in the child and vice-versa.
                 One can avoid this by opening files that need
                 distinct seek pointers separately in the child.
    
         Forking pipe open() not yet implemented
                 The `open(FOO, "|-")' and `open(BAR, "-|")'
                 constructs are not yet implemented.  This limitation
                 can be easily worked around in new code by creating
                 a pipe explicitly.  The following example shows how
                 to write to a forked child:
    
                     # simulate open(FOO, "|-")
                     sub pipe_to_fork ($) {
                         my $parent = shift;
                         pipe my $child, $parent or die;
                         my $pid = fork();
                         die "fork() failed: $!" unless defined $pid;
                         if ($pid) {
                             close $child;
                         }
                         else {
                             close $parent;
                             open(STDIN, "<&=" . fileno($child)) or die;
                         }
                         $pid;
                     }
    
    
    
                     if (pipe_to_fork('FOO')) {
                         # parent
                         print FOO "pipe_to_fork\n";
                         close FOO;
                     }
                     else {
                         # child
                         while (<STDIN>) { print; }
                         close STDIN;
                         exit(0);
                     }
    
                 And this one reads from the child:
    
                     # simulate open(FOO, "-|")
                     sub pipe_from_fork ($) {
                         my $parent = shift;
                         pipe $parent, my $child or die;
                         my $pid = fork();
                         die "fork() failed: $!" unless defined $pid;
                         if ($pid) {
                             close $child;
                         }
                         else {
                             close $parent;
                             open(STDOUT, ">&=" . fileno($child)) or die;
                         }
                         $pid;
                     }
    
                     if (pipe_from_fork('BAR')) {
                         # parent
                         while (<BAR>) { print; }
                         close BAR;
                     }
                     else {
                         # child
                         print "pipe_from_fork\n";
                         close STDOUT;
                         exit(0);
                     }
    
                 Forking pipe open() constructs will be supported in
                 future.
    
         Global state maintained by XSUBs
                 External subroutines (XSUBs) that maintain their own
                 global state may not work correctly.  Such XSUBs
                 will either need to maintain locks to protect
                 simultaneous access to global data from different
                 pseudo-processes, or maintain all their state on the
                 Perl symbol table, which is copied naturally when
                 fork() is called.  A callback mechanism that
                 provides extensions an opportunity to clone their
                 state will be provided in the near future.
    
         Interpreter embedded in larger application
                 The fork() emulation may not behave as expected when
                 it is executed in an application which embeds a Perl
                 interpreter and calls Perl APIs that can evaluate
                 bits of Perl code.  This stems from the fact that
                 the emulation only has knowledge about the Perl
                 interpreter's own data structures and knows nothing
                 about the containing application's state.  For
                 example, any state carried on the application's own
                 call stack is out of reach.
    
         Thread-safety of extensions
                 Since the fork() emulation runs code in multiple
                 threads, extensions calling into non-thread-safe
                 libraries may not work reliably when calling fork().
                 As Perl's threading support gradually becomes more
                 widely adopted even on platforms with a native
                 fork(), such extensions are expected to be fixed for
                 thread-safety.
    
    
    

    BUGS

         o       Having pseudo-process IDs be negative integers
                 breaks down for the integer `-1' because the wait()
                 and waitpid() functions treat this number as being
                 special.  The tacit assumption in the current
                 implementation is that the system never allocates a
                 thread ID of `1' for user threads.  A better
                 representation for pseudo-process IDs will be
                 implemented in future.
    
         o       This document may be incomplete in some respects.
    
    
    

    AUTHOR

         Support for concurrent interpreters and the fork() emulation
         was implemented by ActiveState, with funding from Microsoft
         Corporation.
    
         This document is authored and maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy
         <gsar@activestate.com>.
    
    
    

    SEE ALSO

         the fork entry in the perlfunc manpage, the perlipc manpage
    
    
    
    


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