ANONYMOUS wrote:

ANONYMOUS wrote:

After going through multiple years of forums, I believe I found an answer to this specific question here: https://secure.csse.uwa.edu.au/run/help2002?p=np&opt=U215&year=2019

Thanks for the link. However, unless I'm misinterpreting it, that thread ended unresolved too. Dr. McDonald's only contribution in that thread was a non-answer (below):

Will it? In all cases? There are no trick questions in the tests.

All the other messages seem to be speculation, where the same arguments are made (what if fork() doesn't work). As far as I can tell, the only new information from that thread is that Dr. McDonald doesn't view it as a trick question. While it is interesting that it means it's not a mistake, he doesn't elaborate on it at all or provide any indication about what the question is supposed to be testing, so my point still stands that there is no available explanation.

It does seem like this question is an issue with semantics (which has happened before) and being such a minute detail of the system call. It seems, at least, possible that by "successfully executes" it just means that it doesn't have any run-time errors, but I am not sure why that would be the case either. There is also another thread I found here but this is still rather vague.