-1 is what you get back from fork() when it fails. Normally, it returns a pid_t which is positive if you’re the parent, or zero if you’re the child.

-1, when handed to kill() on Linux, means “target every process but myself and init”. Therefore, when you take the return value from fork(), fail to check for an error, and later hand that value to kill(), you might just kill everything else on the machine.

Great story.

Create a post

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person’s post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you’re posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don’t want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



  • 1 user online
  • 1 user / day
  • 1 user / week
  • 1 user / month
  • 1.11K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 1.21K Posts
  • 17.8K Comments
  • Modlog