fork, exec no wait

[robertcdio at my-deja.com]

Heres the deal:
a process vfork/execs a child
child does stuff1 while...
parent runs stuff2  (without waiting for child to finish)

*But* upon  completion of child, i want the parent to switch to stuff3

simple right?

well here is the problem i cant find a way for the rent to know that
there little guy is done...  could call wait or waitpid but both of
those stall the parents process... i looked at some early versions of
system(function)  and thought i was on to something because i cam
across the wait command embedded in a while loop with no body than i
thought well perhaps the wait command doesnt actually wait at all but
is stalled by the while loop so i dropped stuff2 into the body of the
while loop... allas this didn't work. So i had a smoke...
then i thought well if the child is done its pid goes away so i figured
well thats simple i just nest a call to get the childs pid into a while
loop so that the parent routinely checks for the childs expected pid.
hmm the parent can't talk to the child only the child can talk to the
parent... am i right wrong confused in the wrong proffecion?  HELP
I know i should be a writer check out the run on sentences!!! Kudos to
the brilliance that aids me(and bring anti perspirant)!


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