Re: stupid question: how can I finish a program?

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Robert A Duff wrote:
> If you're running under a proper operating system, then all resources
> visible outside the program will be cleaned up when the program exits.

This is true only in the most trivial sense. If I have a program that
contacts a license manager (for example) and grabs the license, then aborts,
I could be in trouble. That's why license managers check for that sort of
failure. If I create a lock-file, that lock-file doesn't get cleaned up
(under UNIX, for example). 

Other OSes (like Amiga's OS) specifically don't clean up anything at all, as
this lets you do things like allocate memory, load a program into it, and
start it up and then exit yourself. You have to clean it up for yourself.

Some mainframe OSes leave the clean-up to the shell. It's the shell's
responsibility to free the memory and close the files. However, I'd expect
that one would count the shell as "part of the OS" in these systems.

So no, in general, a "proper" operating system doesn't clean up all visible
resources. Not even with exit() calls. :-)

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
   ** http://images.fbrtech.com/dnew/ **

Try our EbolaBurgers...
      So tender they melt in your mouth.