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Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 22:21:51 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>
Cc: mingo@elte.hu, roland@redhat.com, torvalds@osdl.org,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] use pid_alive in proc_pid_status
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Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com> wrote:
>
> +/**
>  + * pid_alive - check that a task structure is not stale
>  + * @p: Task structure to be checked.
>  + *
>  + * Test if a process is not yet dead (at most zombie state)
>  + * If pid_alive fails, then pointers within the task structure
>  + * can be stale and must not be dereferenced.
>  + */
>  +int pid_alive(struct task_struct *p)
>  +{
>  +	return p->pids[PIDTYPE_PID].nr != 0;
>  +}

Can we not simply test p->exit_state?  That's already done in quite a few
places and making things consistent would be nice.