[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #37591] system with async option results in zombie processes

[Mike Miller]

Follow-up Comment #11, bug #37591 (project octave):

Re Anonymous - yes, that's what I was proposing, and it sounds like it's a bad
idea because users may rely on the process ID of the async'd process for
information. So I think we should leave things the way they are.

Re Dan - background periodic reaping is not complicated at all, the code is
already in Octave to do exactly this. I think adding a user callback function
support would make this much more complicated.

I agree with comment #9, the existing behavior should be kept in place as it
is now, and maybe a new option or a new function for adding process IDs to be
harvested could be added.

This could be a new option on the system function, something like


system ("xterm", [], "async", "cleanup");


Or it could be a completely new function to let the caller tell Octave that it
doesn't care about the process ID and wants it to be harvested whenever
possible, something like


pid = system ("xterm", [], "async");
waitpid_later (pid);


This function would not block, it would simply add the process ID to Octave's
child_list to be cleaned up whenever it exits eventually.

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