Question

I’m studying computer systems and I’ve made this very simple function which uses fork() to create a child process. fork() returns a pid_t that is 0 if it’s a child process. But calling the getpid() function within this child process returns a different, nonzero pid. In the code I have below, is newPid only meaningful in the context of the program, and not to the operating system? Is it possibly only a relative value, measured against the pid of the parent?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void unixError(char* msg)
{
    printf("%s: %s\n", msg, strerror(errno));
    exit(0);
}

pid_t Fork()
{
    pid_t pid;
    if ((pid = fork()) < 0)
        unixError("Fork error");
    return pid;
}


int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{
    pid_t thisPid, parentPid, newPid;
    int count = 0;
    thisPid = getpid();
    parentPid = getppid();

    printf("thisPid = %d, parent pid = %d\n", thisPid, parentPid);

    if ((newPid = Fork()) == 0) {
        count++;
        printf("I am the child. My pid is %d, my other pid is %d\n", getpid(), newPid);
        exit(0);
    }
    printf("I am the parent. My pid is %d\n", thisPid);
    return 0;
}

Output:

thisPid = 30050, parent pid = 30049
I am the parent. My pid is 30050
I am the child. My pid is 30052, my other pid is 0

Lastly, why is the child’s pid 2 higher than the parent’s, and not 1? The difference between the main function’s pid and its parent is 1, but when we create a child it increments the pid by 2. Why is that?

Answer 1

From fork man page :

Return Value

On success, the PID of the child process is returned in the parent,
and 0 is returned in the child. On failure, -1 is returned in the
parent, no child process is created, and errno is set appropriately.

Fork does not returns the pid of the child, only in the parent. Therefore, the child process does not have two pids.

Try this

int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{
    pid_t thisPid, parentPid, newPid;
    int count = 0;
    thisPid = getpid();
    parentPid = getppid();

    printf("thisPid = %d, parent pid = %d\n", thisPid, parentPid);

    if ((newPid = Fork()) == 0) {
        count++;
        printf("I am teh child. My pid is %d\n", getpid());
        exit(0);
    }
    else
       printf("I am the parent. My pid is %d, my child pid is %d\n", thisPid, newPid);
    return 0;
}