> The term "zombie" has a very specific, if somewhat whimsical, meaning
> for a Unix operating system. On Unix, every process is created ("forked")
> by a parent process. The parent process is expected to wait for its
> child to exit, after which the parent collects certain statistics about
> the completed child process. When a child process has executed the exit()
> system call, but its parent has not yet collected those statistics, the
> child process is said to be in the "zombie" state. Think of it as a
> process which as died but has not yet left this world.

Zombies are also a general idea.  I think if you told any computer
science person that there were zombie objects in your system, they would
understand what you mean: you have dead objects (of whatever kind)
floating around, but for consistency's sake they can't yet take the
final step into the abyss.  Granted, I can't think of a specific
example....

(Of course, if the objects are still being used, it means the objects
aren't *really* dead after all, doesn't it?  But then, are zombies
really dead?  Hmmmm.  :))


-Lex