NAME
perlfork - Perl's fork() emulation
SYNOPSIS
NOTE: As of the 5.8.0 release, fork() emulation has considerably
matured. However, there are still a few known bugs and differences
from real fork() that might affect you. See the "BUGS" and
"CAVEATS AND LIMITATIONS" sections below.
Perl provides a fork() keyword that corresponds to the Unix system call
of the same name. On most Unix-like platforms where the fork() system
call is available, Perl's fork() simply calls it.
On some platforms such as Windows where the fork() system call is not
available, Perl can be built to emulate fork() at the interpreter
level. While the emulation is designed to be as compatible as possible
with the real fork() at the level of the Perl program, there are cer-
tain important differences that stem from the fact that all the pseudo
child "processes" created this way live in the same real process as far
as the operating system is concerned.
This document provides a general overview of the capabilities and limi-
tations of the fork() emulation. Note that the issues discussed here
are not applicable to platforms where a real fork() is available and
Perl has been configured to use it.
DESCRIPTION
The fork() emulation is implemented at the level of the Perl inter-
preter. What this means in general is that running fork() will actu-
ally clone the running interpreter and all its state, and run the
cloned interpreter in a separate thread, beginning execution in the new
thread just after the point where the fork() was called in the parent.
We will refer to the thread that implements this child "process" as the
pseudo-process.
To the Perl program that called fork(), all this is designed to be
transparent. The parent returns from the fork() with a pseudo-process
ID that can be subsequently used in any process manipulation functions;
the child returns from the fork() with a value of 0 to signify that it
is the child pseudo-process.
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Most Perl features behave in a natural way within pseudo-processes.
$$ or $PROCESSID
This special variable is correctly set to the pseudo-process
ID. It can be used to identify pseudo-processes within a par-
ticular session. Note that this value is subject to recycling
if any pseudo-processes are launched after others have been
wait()-ed on.
%ENV Each pseudo-process maintains its own virtual environment.
Modifications to %ENV affect the virtual environment, and are
only visible within that pseudo-process, and in any processes
(or pseudo-processes) launched from it.
chdir() and all other builtins that accept filenames
Each pseudo-process maintains its own virtual idea of the cur-
rent directory. Modifications to the current directory using
chdir() are only visible within that pseudo-process, and in any
processes (or pseudo-processes) launched from it. All file and
directory accesses from the pseudo-process will correctly map
the virtual working directory to the real working directory
appropriately.
wait() and waitpid()
wait() and waitpid() can be passed a pseudo-process ID returned
by fork(). These calls will properly wait for the termination
of the pseudo-process and return its status.
kill() kill() can be used to terminate a pseudo-process by passing it
the ID returned by fork(). This should not be used except
under dire circumstances, because the operating system may not
guarantee integrity of the process resources when a running
thread is terminated. Note that using kill() on a
pseudo-process() may typically cause memory leaks, because the
thread that implements the pseudo-process does not get a chance
to clean up its resources.
exec() Calling exec() within a pseudo-process actually spawns the
requested executable in a separate process and waits for it to
complete before exiting with the same exit status as that
process. This means that the process ID reported within the
running executable will be different from what the earlier Perl
fork() might have returned. Similarly, any process manipula-
tion functions applied to the ID returned by fork() will affect
the waiting pseudo-process that called exec(), not the real
process it is waiting for after the exec().
exit() exit() always exits just the executing pseudo-process, after
automatically wait()-ing for any outstanding child pseudo-pro-
cesses. Note that this means that the process as a whole will
not exit unless all running pseudo-processes have exited.
Open handles to files, directories and network sockets
All open handles are dup()-ed in pseudo-processes, so that
closing any handles in one process does not affect the others.
See below for some limitations.
RReessoouurrccee lliimmiittss
In the eyes of the operating system, pseudo-processes created via the
fork() emulation are simply threads in the same process. This means
that any process-level limits imposed by the operating system apply to
all pseudo-processes taken together. This includes any limits imposed
by the operating system on the number of open file, directory and
socket handles, limits on disk space usage, limits on memory size, lim-
its on CPU utilization etc.
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If the parent process is killed (either using Perl's kill() builtin, or
using some external means) all the pseudo-processes are killed as well,
and the whole process exits.
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During the normal course of events, the parent process and every
pseudo-process started by it will wait for their respective pseudo-
children to complete before they exit. This means that the parent and
every pseudo-child created by it that is also a pseudo-parent will only
exit after their pseudo-children have exited.
A way to mark a pseudo-processes as running detached from their parent
(so that the parent would not have to wait() for them if it doesn't
want to) will be provided in future.
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BEGIN blocks
The fork() emulation will not work entirely correctly when
called from within a BEGIN block. The forked copy will run the
contents of the BEGIN block, but will not continue parsing the
source stream after the BEGIN block. For example, consider the
following code:
BEGIN {
fork and exit; # fork child and exit the parent
print "inner\n";
}
print "outer\n";
This will print:
inner
rather than the expected:
inner
outer
This limitation arises from fundamental technical difficulties
in cloning and restarting the stacks used by the Perl parser in
the middle of a parse.
Open filehandles
Any filehandles open at the time of the fork() will be
dup()-ed. Thus, the files can be closed independently in the
parent and child, but beware that the dup()-ed handles will
still share the same seek pointer. Changing the seek position
in the parent will change it in the child and vice-versa. One
can avoid this by opening files that need distinct seek point-
ers separately in the child.
Forking pipe open() not yet implemented
The "open(FOO, "|-")" and "open(BAR, "-|")" constructs are not
yet implemented. This limitation can be easily worked around
in new code by creating a pipe explicitly. The following exam-
ple shows how to write to a forked child:
# simulate open(FOO, "|-")
sub pipetofork ($) {
my $parent = shift;
pipe my $child, $parent or die;
my $pid = fork();
die "fork() failed: $!" unless defined $pid;
if ($pid) {
close $child;
}
else {
close $parent;
open(STDIN, "<&=" . fileno($child)) or die;
}
$pid;
}
if (pipetofork('FOO')) {
# parent
print FOO "pipetofork\n";
close FOO;
}
else {
# child
while () { print; }
exit(0);
}
And this one reads from the child:
# simulate open(FOO, "-|")
sub pipefromfork ($) {
my $parent = shift;
pipe $parent, my $child or die;
my $pid = fork();
die "fork() failed: $!" unless defined $pid;
if ($pid) {
close $child;
}
else {
close $parent;
open(STDOUT, ">&=" . fileno($child)) or die;
}
$pid;
}
if (pipefromfork('BAR')) {
# parent
while () { print; }
close BAR;
}
else {
# child
print "pipefromfork\n";
exit(0);
}
Forking pipe open() constructs will be supported in future.
Global state maintained by XSUBs
External subroutines (XSUBs) that maintain their own global
state may not work correctly. Such XSUBs will either need to
maintain locks to protect simultaneous access to global data
from different pseudo-processes, or maintain all their state on
the Perl symbol table, which is copied naturally when fork() is
called. A callback mechanism that provides extensions an
opportunity to clone their state will be provided in the near
future.
Interpreter embedded in larger application
The fork() emulation may not behave as expected when it is exe-
cuted in an application which embeds a Perl interpreter and
calls Perl APIs that can evaluate bits of Perl code. This
stems from the fact that the emulation only has knowledge about
the Perl interpreter's own data structures and knows nothing
about the containing application's state. For example, any
state carried on the application's own call stack is out of
reach.
Thread-safety of extensions
Since the fork() emulation runs code in multiple threads,
extensions calling into non-thread-safe libraries may not work
reliably when calling fork(). As Perl's threading support
gradually becomes more widely adopted even on platforms with a
native fork(), such extensions are expected to be fixed for
thread-safety.
BUGS
+o Having pseudo-process IDs be negative integers breaks down for
the integer "-1" because the wait() and waitpid() functions
treat this number as being special. The tacit assumption in
the current implementation is that the system never allocates a
thread ID of 1 for user threads. A better representation for
pseudo-process IDs will be implemented in future.
+o In certain cases, the OS-level handles created by the pipe(),
socket(), and accept() operators are apparently not duplicated
accurately in pseudo-processes. This only happens in some sit-
uations, but where it does happen, it may result in deadlocks
between the read and write ends of pipe handles, or inability
to send or receive data across socket handles.
+o This document may be incomplete in some respects.
AUTHOR Support for concurrent interpreters and the fork() emulation was imple-
mented by ActiveState, with funding from Microsoft Corporation.
This document is authored and maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy
.
SEE ALSO
"fork" in perlfunc, perlipc
perl v5.8.6 2004-11-05 PERLFORK(1)