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.\"     @(#)vfork.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
.\"
.Dd June 9, 2021
.Dt VFORK 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm vfork
.Nd spawn new process in a virtual memory efficient way
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In unistd.h
.Ft pid_t
.Fn vfork void
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
system call creates a new process that does not have a new
virtual address space, but rather shares address space with the
parent, thus avoiding potentially expensive copy-on-write operations
normally associated with creating a new process.
It is useful when the purpose of
.Xr fork 2
would have been to create a new system context for an
.Xr execve 2 .
The
.Nm
system call differs from
.Xr fork 2
in that the child borrows the parent's memory and thread of
control until a call to
.Xr execve 2
or an exit (either by a call to
.Xr _exit 2
or abnormally).
The parent process is suspended while the child is using its resources.
.Pp
The
.Nm
system call returns 0 in the child's context and (later) the pid
of the child in the parent's context.
.Pp
The
.Nm
system call can normally be used just like
.Xr fork 2 .
It does not work, however, to return while running in the child's context
from the procedure that called
.Fn vfork
since the eventual return from
.Fn vfork
would then return to a no longer existing stack frame.
Be careful, also, to call
.Xr _exit 2
rather than
.Xr exit 3
if you can't
.Xr execve 2 ,
since
.Xr exit 3
will flush and close standard I/O channels, and thereby mess up the
standard I/O data structures
in the parent process.
(Even with
.Xr fork 2
it is wrong to call
.Xr exit 3
since buffered data would then be flushed twice.)
.Sh RETURN VALUES
Same as for
.Xr fork 2 .
.Sh ERRORS
Same as for
.Xr fork 2 .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr execve 2 ,
.Xr fork 2 ,
.Xr sigaction 2 ,
.Xr wait 2 ,
.Xr posix_spawn 3
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Fn vfork
function call appeared in
.Bx 3.0 .
In
.Bx 4.4 ,
the semantics were changed to only suspend the parent and not share
the address space.
The original semantics were reintroduced in
.Nx 1.4 .
.Sh BUGS
Portable applications should not depend on the memory sharing
semantics of
.Fn vfork
as implementations exist that implement
.Fn vfork
as plain
.Xr fork 2 .
.Pp
To avoid a possible deadlock situation, processes that are children
in the middle of a
.Fn vfork
are never sent
.Dv SIGTSTP ,
.Dv SIGTTOU
or
.Dv SIGTTIN
signals; rather, output or
.Xr ioctl 2
calls are allowed and input attempts result in an end-of-file indication.
.Pp
New applications should prefer
.Xr posix_spawn 3
over
.Nm
followed by
.Xr execve 2 .