Question

I know I’m going to need to use fork(), but this just creates a single child process. Do i simply call fork again from within the child process? Also, I need them to communicate through a signal or pipe, which is easier to implement and what do i need to know for doing that (functions, etc..)

Answer 1

To create a second process, call fork() again – either within the parent or the child (but not both!). Which you choose depends on whether you want this process to be a child of the original parent or a child of the first child process (it is usual for it to be a child of the original parent).

Communicating through a pipe is much simpler and more reliable than using signals. pipe(), close(), read(), write() and select() are the key functions here.

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For example, to have the parent create two child processes, you would do something like:

pid_t child_a, child_b;

child_a = fork();

if (child_a == 0) {
    /* Child A code */
} else {
    child_b = fork();

    if (child_b == 0) {
        /* Child B code */
    } else {
        /* Parent Code */
    }
}