What exactly does fork return?

Question

On success, the PID of the child process is returned in the parent’s thread of execution, and a 0 is returned in the child’s thread of execution.

p = fork();

I'm confused at its manual page,is p equal to 0 or PID?

Answer 1

I'm not sure how the manual can be any clearer! fork() creates a new process, so you now have two identical processes. To distinguish between them, the return value of fork() differs. In the original process, you get the PID of the child process. In the child process, you get 0.

So a canonical use is as follows:

p = fork(); if (0 == p) {     // We're the child process } else if (p > 0) {     // We're the parent process } else {     // We're the parent process, but child couldn't be created } 

Answer 2

                              p = fork();                         /* assume no errors */                         /* you now have two */                         /* programs running */                          --------------------       if (p > 0) {                |            if (p == 0) {         printf("parent\n");       |              printf("child\n");         ...                       |              ... 

Answer 3

Processes are structured in a directed tree where you only know your single-parent (getppid()). In short, fork() returns -1 on error like many other system functions, non-zero value is useful for initiator of the fork call (the parent) to know its new-child pid.

Nothing is as good as example:

/* fork/getpid test */
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>     /* fork(), getpid() */
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    int pid;

    printf("Entry point: my pid is %d, parent pid is %d\n",
           getpid(), getppid());

    pid = fork();
    if (pid == 0) {
        printf("Child: my pid is %d, parent pid is %d\n",
               getpid(), getppid());
    }
    else if (pid > 0) {
        printf("Parent: my pid is %d, parent pid is %d, my child pid is %d\n",
               getpid(), getppid(), pid);
    }
    else {
        printf("Parent: oops! can not create a child (my pid is %d)\n",
               getpid());
    }

    return 0;
}

And the result (bash is pid 2249, in this case):

Entry point: my pid is 16051, parent pid is 2249
Parent: my pid is 16051, parent pid is 2249, my child pid is 16052
Child: my pid is 16052, parent pid is 16051

If you need to share some resources (files, parent pid, etc.) between parent and child, look at clone() (for GNU C library, and maybe others)