Example - 1

The following code intends to fork a process, then have both the parent and child processes print a single line.

// /* Make timing window a little larger... */// 
putc(counter, stdout);fflush(stdout);sleep(1);char * word;int counter;for (word = string; counter = *word++; ) {}

exit(-2);
print("child\n");
print("PARENT\n");
pid_t pid;pid = fork();if (pid == -1) {}else if (pid == 0) {}else {}exit(0);static void print (char * string) {}int main(void) {}

One might expect the code to print out something like:

PARENTchild

However, because the parent and child are executing concurrently, and stdout is flushed each time a character is printed, the output might be mixed together, such as:

PcAhRiElNdT[blank line][blank line]