How many processes this Program Creates

Question

Please, my doctor in the university is too lazy to solve this exam question, can anyone help me?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main() {
    int i;
    for(i=0;i<3;i++)
        if(fork()) i++;

    while(1);
    return 1;
}

The question is: how many processes does this program generate?

I drew the tree of processes and I think this program will not go to an end. So there are infinite number of processes but I'm not sure.

Answer 1

The while loops that you have are not infinite as they will eventually return a value and exit. However, I think that by process you mean a different thread that would run separately in the memory.

EDIT: In this case you will generate a thread by calling the fork() method for the first time, which will return true and the if statement will execute. At this point i will become 1 which would be incremented by additional one at the end of the for loop so the next iteration will have i = 2. At this point you will call fork once more and then the loop will exit, so the answer is 2 threads at the end.