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I would like to create a new process using fork and then use excl to start a web browser with a url. Im not too familiar with fork and excel so any help would be appreciated. thanks

EDIT: this is my code but i don't think its right

if(fork() == 0) {
      execl (url,0);
      printf("Route opened in brwoser\n");
    } else {
      printf("Route cannot be opened.\n");
    }
John Ledbetter
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Lycon
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1 Answers1

0

Read the manual pages of these calls first:

man 2 fork
man 3 execl

The syscall fork() makes a copy of the process and returns in both, returning the child process ID in the parent and zero in the child. If it returns a negative number, it means it's failed.

pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid < 0)
    printf("Fork failed\n");
else if (pid > 0) /* Here comes the parent process */
    printf("Fork successful\n");
else /* Here comes the child process */
    ...

On the other hand execl() does not return at all. It throws away your program, and replaces it with image of the one specified in its arguments in the same process.

If execl() returns, it's an error. It probably did not find the program you specified.

Its arguments are the called program (an URL is not a program) and its arguments.

...
else { /* Here comes the child process */
    execl("/usr/bin/firefox", "/usr/bin/firefox", "example.com", (char*)NULL);
    printf("Could not execute Firefox\n");
}
SzG
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