local-reaper 1 user commands nosh
local-reaper become a local "Grim Reaper" or not
`local-reaper` enable next-prog

## Description

`local-reaper` is a chain-loading utility that sets the local "Grim Reaper" setting of the process according to enable and then chain loads to next-prog with the execvp 3 function.

next-prog may contain its own command line options, which `local-reaper` will ignore.

enable can be the literal values `true`, `false`, `on`, `off`, `yes`, or `no`.

## Cave!

One cannot just apply this willy-nilly.

Setting a process to be a local "Grim Reaper" when the program that it is running does not handle being notified about children that it did not fork in the first place can cause some programs to misbehave or even crash. Most shells understand that they might hear about "disowned" processes that they deliberately lost track of, and can cope with being local reapers. Not all other programs do, however.

Setting a process to be a local "Grim Reaper" when the program that it is running does not itself wait for child processes, or only waits for specifically identified children that it knows about, can cause the process table to fill up with "zombie" entries.

## Author

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard