Re: libiberty/pex-unix vfork abuse?

[Ian Lance Taylor <iant at google dot com>]

Joe Buck <Joe.Buck@synopsys.COM> writes:

> I don't think it's wise to waste time fixing theoretical bugs
> exposed by close reading of the standard.  Now, messing with environ
> with vfork will mess up the parent process, and if that happens it's a
> bug.  But getting around it by using fork will harm portability, as the
> only reason to bother with vfork at all is that fork might not be
> available.

That's not the only reason.  I used vfork because I measured
performance improvements with vfork over fork.  I can't remember
whether I did the measurements on GNU/Linux or on NetBSD.

Performance improvements are not particularly surprising.  Despite the
fact that, as the Open Group specification suggests, vfork is a broken
interface, it was implemented to be faster than fork/exec, and it is
faster.

Ian