From owner-help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Sun Dec  1 22:12:25 1996
Subject: Re: zombie "ls" 
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:12:09 -0600

On 28-Nov-1996, Mario Storti <mstorti at galileo dot unl dot edu dot ar> wrote:

>>>>> Thu, 28 Nov 1996 10:42:57 +0000 (GMT)
                Ted dot Harding at nessie dot mcc dot ac dot uk (Ted Harding) 

> I don't usually run "ls" from within octave, preferring to observe disk
> life through a different window, so hadn't noticed this one before.
> 
> But this time I noticed, after "ps -ax":
> 
>  6851 pp2 Z <   0:00 (ls) <zombie>
>  6854 pp2 Z <   0:00 (ls) <zombie>
>  6855 pp2 Z <   0:00 (ls) <zombie>
>  6968 pp2 Z <   0:00 (ls) <zombie>
>  8149 pp2 Z <   0:00 (ls) <zombie>
> 
> and, in fact, each time I execute the octave command "ls" I get a new
> zombie process. ("pp2" = ttyp2 is the octave window).
> 
> Since "ls is a builtin text-function [to] print a directory listing", one
> feels that it should not be creating zombies. Or does this only happen on
> some OS's (Linux in my case)?

I can reproduce this problem with 1.1.1 on a Linux system, but not on
a DEC Alpha running OSF/1 3.2.

The problem appears to be fixed in the current test releases.

Thanks,

jwe