Fork()

[TheCreator]

I was trying to learn TCP/IP sockets and grasped all the concepts. But when reading the client source code I stumbled upon a function- fork().
I have no idea what this does whatsoever so I googled it and found it creates instances of the program (child,parent).
Could someone show me how this works? I am relatively brand new to programming and just experimenting around.
I am running on a Mac using netbeans.
Could someone explain how it works and possible give a VERY simple example with and explanation?
Thanks for all help
The server which has the fork code is bellow

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <netdb.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <signal.h>

#define PORT "3490"  // the port users will be connecting to

#define BACKLOG 10     // how many pending connections queue will hold

void sigchld_handler(int s)
{
    while(waitpid(-1, NULL, WNOHANG) > 0);
}

// get sockaddr, IPv4 or IPv6:
void *get_in_addr(struct sockaddr *sa)
{
    if (sa->sa_family == AF_INET) {
        return &(((struct sockaddr_in*)sa)->sin_addr);
    }

    return &(((struct sockaddr_in6*)sa)->sin6_addr);
}

int main(void)
{
    int sockfd, new_fd;  // listen on sock_fd, new connection on new_fd
    struct addrinfo hints, *servinfo, *p;
    struct sockaddr_storage their_addr; // connector's address information
    socklen_t sin_size;
    struct sigaction sa;
    int yes=1;
    char s[INET6_ADDRSTRLEN];
    int rv;

    memset(&hints, 0, sizeof hints);
    hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC;
    hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM;
    hints.ai_flags = AI_PASSIVE; // use my IP

    if ((rv = getaddrinfo(NULL, PORT, &hints, &servinfo)) != 0) {
        fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo: %s\n", gai_strerror(rv));
        return 1;
    }

    // loop through all the results and bind to the first we can
    for(p = servinfo; p != NULL; p = p->ai_next) {
        if ((sockfd = socket(p->ai_family, p->ai_socktype,
                p->ai_protocol)) == -1) {
            perror("server: socket");
            continue;
        }

        if (setsockopt(sockfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, &yes,
                sizeof(int)) == -1) {
            perror("setsockopt");
            exit(1);
        }

        if (bind(sockfd, p->ai_addr, p->ai_addrlen) == -1) {
            close(sockfd);
            perror("server: bind");
            continue;
        }

        break;
    }

    if (p == NULL)  {
        fprintf(stderr, "server: failed to bind\n");
        return 2;
    }

    freeaddrinfo(servinfo); // all done with this structure

    if (listen(sockfd, BACKLOG) == -1) {
        perror("listen");
        exit(1);
    }

    sa.sa_handler = sigchld_handler; // reap all dead processes
    sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask);
    sa.sa_flags = SA_RESTART;
    if (sigaction(SIGCHLD, &sa, NULL) == -1) {
        perror("sigaction");
        exit(1);
    }

    printf("server: waiting for connections...\n");

    while(1) {  // main accept() loop
        sin_size = sizeof their_addr;
        new_fd = accept(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&their_addr, &sin_size);
        if (new_fd == -1) {
            perror("accept");
            continue;
        }

        inet_ntop(their_addr.ss_family,
            get_in_addr((struct sockaddr *)&their_addr),
            s, sizeof s);
        printf("server: got connection from %s\n", s);

        if (!fork()) { // this is the child process
            close(sockfd); // child doesn't need the listener
            if (send(new_fd, "Hello, world!", 13, 0) == -1)
                perror("send");
            close(new_fd);
            exit(0);
        }
        close(new_fd);  // parent doesn't need this
    }

    return 0;

[Catfish]

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/node22.html#SECTION002230000000000000000

fork() clones the current running process so basically your program will be split into two processes. Then you use the return value of fork() to figure out if you're in the original process (parent) or the newly spawned clone (child). That is if you want them to do something different instead of the same thing.