Re: Suggested change in net/browse-url.el

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     Since I use 0 here, the output of calling the process is discarded
>     and Emacs does _not_ wait.
> 
> You're right.  Sorry for not noticing that.
> 
>     In fact, this way of using call-process is the _only_ way to start a
>     process in the background without getting an associated process object
>     within Emacs.  It is a bit confusing that the API for starting a
>     particularly asynchronous kind of process is hidden in the function
>     used normally for starting synchronous processes,
> 
> Good point.  We could add a new function for this: fork-process.  What
> do people think of that?

It would be ok to add it (e.g. in subr.el), but fork-process would be
a mis-leading name for it IMO -- fork means that you get two identical
processes (i.e.  two emacs processes running).

I think call-process-nowait would be better (we already have an analogy
with open-network-stream-nowait).  It would simply be a macro which calls
call-process with 0 BUFFER argument -- but with a specific doc string.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk