[erlang-questions] Kill a process tree

[Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)]

If the processes were linked to each other and 
not trapping exits, then killing the root should 
kill the others as well.

But you claim that they are not linked...
I wonder what makes it a tree, then.

You could call processes(), and traverse the list
looking for some common element, perhaps 
initial_call? 

E.g.

1> [P || {P,{initial_call,IC}} <-
   [{P1,process_info(P1,initial_call)} ||
     P1 <- processes()],
     IC == {proc_lib,init_p,5}].
[<0.4.0>,
 <0.7.0>,
 <0.9.0>,
 <0.10.0>,
 <0.11.0>,
 <0.14.0>,
 <0.16.0>,
 <0.17.0>,
 <0.19.0>,
 <0.24.0>,
 <0.25.0>,
 <0.28.0>,
 <0.30.0>,
 <0.31.0>,
 <0.32.0>,
 <0.33.0>,
 <0.34.0>]

Without knowing anything about how the processes
relate to each other, it's a bit difficult to
give advice.

BR,
Ulf W

> -----Original Message-----
> From: erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED 
> [mailto:erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED] On Behalf Of June Kim
> Sent: den 20 april 2007 18:30
> To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: [erlang-questions] Kill a process tree
> 
> Suppose I spawned a process and let's call it "root".
> 
> root will probably spawn a few children, and those children, 
> in turn, would spawn a few grand-children.
> 
> Now, I want to kill the process tree starting from root. How 
> can I achieve it?
> 
> Limitation: the thing is that all the code is written using 
> plain spawn and no consideration was done in the code for 
> this kind of case(such as link). Moreover, you can't change 
> the code. The code for root and so on were written without 
> any regard for this process tree kill. (well, suppose the 
> root and its descendant codes were written by a third-party)
> 
> How can I do it?
> 
> June
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