if_exist_pid()

[Richard B. Johnson]

Anybody know the 'correct' way of determining if a pid still
exists?  I've been using "kill(pid, 0)" and, if it does not
return an error, it is supposed to exist. This is to release
a user-mode lock (semaphore) if the task that held the lock
crashed. Maybe there is a 'if_exist_pid(pid)' call somewhere?
Sending signal 0 to a pid sometimes returns 0, even if the pid
is long-gone and I don't want to read /proc to look for info.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson

Penguin : Linux version 2.4.18 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).

                 Windows-2000/Professional isn't.