How to use fork() in unix? Why not something of the form fork(pointerToFunctionToRun)?

Question

I am having some trouble understanding how to use Unix\'s fork(). I am used to, when in need of parallelization, spawining threads in my application. It\'s always s

Answer 1

Fork has been with us for a very, very, long time. Fork was thought of before the idea of 'start a thread running a particular function' was a glimmer in anyone's eye.

People don't use fork because it's 'better,' we use it because it is the one and only unprivileged user-mode process creation function that works across all variations of Linux. If you want to create a process, you have to call fork. And, for some purposes, a process is what you need, not a thread.

You might consider researching the early papers on the subject.