kill thinks it killed a nonexistant pid

[p5pRT]

Migrated from rt.perl.org#999 (status was 'resolved')

Searchable as RT999$

[p5pRT]

From dhoover@cadence.com

The kill function seems to think it killed a pid even when it hasn't. I've
looked up the usage of the kill command in both O'Reily's Programming Perl
and the perlipc man page. There's even a chunk of code in that man page
that says pretty much the same thing as this example​:

#!/usr/bin/perl

if(!defined($kid_pid = fork())) {
  die "Unforkable? Well THAT ruins story time! $!\n";
} elsif($kid_pid == 0) {
  print "\"Yay! I'm the child!\" exclaims child $kid_pid.\n";
  print "The child goes to sleep, oblivious of its short future.\n\n";
  sleep(500);
  exit(0);
} else {
  sleep(1);
  print "\"Buwahahaha, child! I will brutally murder you while you ";
  print "peacefully sleep!\" cackles the homicidal parent!\n";
  sleep(3);
  print "The parent sneaks upstairs!\n";
  sleep(1);
  $temp = kill('TERM', $kid_pid);
  printf "The parent attacks!!!! He kills %d child%s!!!\n",
  $temp, ($temp == 1) ? "" : "ren";
  sleep(1);
  $temp2 = kill(0, $kid_pid);
  printf "He decides that isn't enough, and dices %d more poor child%s to pieces!!!\n",
  $temp2, ($temp2 == 1) ? "" : "ren";
}

When I run this program, it says that it's killed 1 child in each of
its messages. I made it sleep in all those places on the off chance that the
problem was that things were executing too quickly & tripping all over each
other.

Am I doing something stupidly wrong?

Thanks,
David Hoover

Perl Info

Site configuration information for perl 5.00404:

Configured by artchan at Sun Dec 21 11:52:30 PST 1997.

Summary of my perl5 (5.0 patchlevel 4 subversion 4) configuration:
  Platform:
    osname=solaris, osvers=2.6, archname=sun4-solaris
    uname='sunos despair 5.6 generic sun4m sparc sunw,sparcstation-5 '
    hint=recommended, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define
    bincompat3=y useperlio=undef d_sfio=undef
  Compiler:
    cc='cc', optimize='-O', gccversion=egcs-2.91.02 971216 (gcc-2.8.0)
    cppflags='-I/usr/local/include'
    ccflags ='-I/usr/local/include'
    stdchar='unsigned char', d_stdstdio=define, usevfork=false
    voidflags=15, castflags=0, d_casti32=define, d_castneg=define
    intsize=4, alignbytes=8, usemymalloc=y, prototype=define
  Linker and Libraries:
    ld='cc', ldflags =''
    libpth=/lib /usr/lib /usr/ccs/lib
    libs=-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc -lcrypt
    libc=/lib/libc.so, so=so
    useshrplib=false, libperl=libperl.a
  Dynamic Linking:
    dlsrc=dl_dlopen.xs, dlext=so, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags=' '
    cccdlflags='-fpic', lddlflags='-G'

Locally applied patches:
	


@INC for perl 5.00404:
	/usr/local/perl5.004_04/lib/sun4-solaris/5.00404
	/usr/local/perl5.004_04/lib
	/usr/local/perl5.004_04/lib/site_perl/sun4-solaris
	/usr/local/perl5.004_04/lib/site_perl
	.


Environment for perl 5.00404:
    HOME=/mnt/dhoover
    LANG=C
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/openwin/lib:/usr/lib/X11:/usr/local/lib
    LOGDIR (unset)
    PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/bin:/usr/local:/usr/hosts:/etc:/usr/etc:/opt/SUNWspro/v4.2/bin:/opt/SUNWspro/v4.2/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/mnt/dhoover/bin:/cds/bin:/usr/openwin/bin:/usr/openwin/demo:/usr/openwin/bin/xview:/usr/openwin/fonts:/usr/X11R5/bin:/net/cds317/usr2/mnt2/starb/pvt:/net/cds317/usr2/mnt2/starb/pvt/qaTools/bin:/net/fire/usr1/XFrame5.1/bin:/usr/local/xemacs-19.10/bin:/usr/local/ispell/bin:/opt/netscape:/mnt/dhoover/cmds:/net/snow/usr2/cds/4.4/red/tools/dfII/bin/:.
    PERL_BADLANG (unset)
    SHELL=/bin/csh