Quoting POSIX[0]:
"Care should be taken, also, to call _exit() rather than exit() if exec cannot be used, since
exit() flushes and closes standard I/O channels, thereby damaging the parent process' standard
I/O data structures. (Even with fork(), it is wrong to call exit(), since buffered data would
then be flushed twice.)"
[0]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/vfork.html