On 18/12/12 11:39:56, Dave Angel wrote: > On 12/18/2012 05:27 AM, Hans Mulder wrote: >> On 18/12/12 06:10:43, photonym...@gmail.com wrote: >>> I hope I understand the question... but shouldn't you wait for the process >>> to complete before exiting? >>> >>> Something like: >>> >>> pid = subprocess.Popen(...) >>> pid.wait() >>> >>> Otherwise, it'll exit before the background process is done. >> Why would that be a problem? >> > > Because you don't want to bog the system down with a zombie task.
I think you're confusing zombies with orphans. A zombie results when a child exits before the parent and the parent fails to wait for it. An orphan is what you get if the parent exits before the child does. On a Un*x system, the 'init' process (the process with ID 1) inherits orphan processes and collects their exit status when they terminate. Thus orphans do not become zombies. I have no idea what would happen under Windows. Hope this helps, -- HansM -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
