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

[Rik]

Follow-up Comment #12, bug #37591 (project octave):

Because this is a potentially valuable feature I don't see a reason to remove
it.  It is true that, in general, callbacks are cleaner than polling
protocols, but it is also dependent on the particulars of the design in
question.

There are reasons to believe that this is not a tremendous problem for Octave.
 First, there hasn't been a rash of bug reports reporting problems with
resource usage.  Second, we know that the zombie process doesn't consume large
amounts of memory, disk space, pixels, or some other finite resource.  Rather
it takes up just a small amount of space in the process table.  There is a
limit to the size of the kernel process table, but again it seems unlikely
that Octave would be spawning hundreds of subprocesses.

Octave is all volunteer, so if this is the "itch" you want to scratch then go
for it.  But to my mind there are many more impactful bugs that could be
tackled first.

For this one, I think at least a first pass should be a documentation fix. 
The docstring for system has no seealso link to waitpid, and there is no
discussion at all about the repercussions of choosing "async".

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