BS>>> The spawn family of calls are unique to PC-based single-tasking
 BS>>> operting systems, although they're also present in Win32 and OS/2
 BS>>> systems for backwards code compatibility. 
 JdBP>> Actually they aren't.  They are in Win32 and OS/2 compiler
 JdBP>> libraries  because they exactly match the paradigms used by the
 JdBP>> underlying operating  system API.  Both Win32 and OS/2 support the
 JdBP>> notion of creating a process from a  named file, and neither
 JdBP>> support the notion of creating a process by duplicating an 
 JdBP>> already running process.  
 MB> there is a spawn() call in linux/glibc, i think, but that's not POSIX
 MB> and that's not a system call either. It might be using vfork or a
 MB> similar thing.
spawn() is not a system call in DOS, Win32, or OS/2 either.
I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a spawn() available to UNIX and linux 
programmers.  It is, after all, pretty trivial to implement spawn() on an 
operating system that uses the fork/exec paradigm.  It is the converse case 
that is hard.
 ¯ JdeBP ®
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