waitwaitpidwait4wait3
- wait for process termination
LIBRARY
Lb libc
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h> pid_t
wait (int *status);
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/resource.h> pid_t
waitpid (pid_t wpid int *status int options); pid_t
wait3 (int *status int options struct rusage *rusage); pid_t
wait4 (pid_t wpid int *status int options struct rusage *rusage);
DESCRIPTION
The
wait ();
function suspends execution of its calling process until
Fa status
information is available for a terminated child process,
or a signal is received.
On return from a successful
wait ();
call,
the
Fa status
area contains termination information about the process that exited
as defined below.
The
wait4 ();
system call provides a more general interface for programs
that need to wait for certain child processes,
that need resource utilization statistics accumulated by child processes,
or that require options.
The other wait functions are implemented using
wait4 (.);
The
Fa wpid
argument specifies the set of child processes for which to wait.
If
Fa wpid
is -1, the call waits for any child process.
If
Fa wpid
is 0,
the call waits for any child process in the process group of the caller.
If
Fa wpid
is greater than zero, the call waits for the process with process id
Fa wpid .
If
Fa wpid
is less than -1, the call waits for any process whose process group id
equals the absolute value of
Fa wpid .
The
Fa status
argument is defined below.
The
Fa options
argument contains the bitwise OR of any of the following options.
The
WCONTINUED
option indicates that children of the current process that
have continued from a job control stop, by receiving a
SIGCONT
signal, should also have their status reported.
The
WNOHANG
option
is used to indicate that the call should not block if
there are no processes that wish to report status.
If the
WUNTRACED
option is set,
children of the current process that are stopped
due to a
SIGTTIN , SIGTTOU , SIGTSTP
or
SIGSTOP
signal also have their status reported.
The
WSTOPPED
option is an alias for
WUNTRACED
The
WNOWAIT
option keeps the process whose status is returned in a waitable state.
The process may be waited for again after this call completes.
If
Fa rusage
is non-zero, a summary of the resources used by the terminated
process and all its
children is returned (this information is currently not available
for stopped or continued processes).
When the
WNOHANG
option is specified and no processes
wish to report status,
wait4 ();
returns a
process id
of 0.
The
waitpid ();
function is identical to
wait4 ();
with an
Fa rusage
value of zero.
The older
wait3 ();
call is the same as
wait4 ();
with a
Fa wpid
value of -1.
The following macros may be used to test the manner of exit of the process.
One of the first three macros will evaluate to a non-zero (true) value:
Fn WIFCONTINUED status
True if the process has not terminated, and
has continued after a job control stop.
This macro can be true only if the wait call specified the
WCONTINUED
option).
Fn WIFEXITED status
True if the process terminated normally by a call to
_exit2
or
exit(3).
Fn WIFSIGNALED status
True if the process terminated due to receipt of a signal.
Fn WIFSTOPPED status
True if the process has not terminated, but has stopped and can be restarted.
This macro can be true only if the wait call specified the
WUNTRACED
option
or if the child process is being traced (see
ptrace(2)).
Depending on the values of those macros, the following macros
produce the remaining status information about the child process:
Fn WEXITSTATUS status
If
WIFEXITED (status);
is true, evaluates to the low-order 8 bits
of the argument passed to
_exit2
or
exit(3)
by the child.
Fn WTERMSIG status
If
WIFSIGNALED (status);
is true, evaluates to the number of the signal
that caused the termination of the process.
Fn WCOREDUMP status
If
WIFSIGNALED (status);
is true, evaluates as true if the termination
of the process was accompanied by the creation of a core file
containing an image of the process when the signal was received.
Fn WSTOPSIG status
If
WIFSTOPPED (status);
is true, evaluates to the number of the signal
that caused the process to stop.
NOTES
See
sigaction(2)
for a list of termination signals.
A status of 0 indicates normal termination.
If a parent process terminates without
waiting for all of its child processes to terminate,
the remaining child processes are assigned the parent
process 1 ID (the init process ID).
If a signal is caught while any of the
wait ();
calls are pending,
the call may be interrupted or restarted when the signal-catching routine
returns,
depending on the options in effect for the signal;
see discussion of
SA_RESTART
in
sigaction(2).
The implementation queues one
SIGCHLD
signal for each child process whose
status has changed, if
wait ();
returns because the status of a child process is available, the pending
SIGCHLD signal associated with the process ID of the child process will
be discarded.
Any other pending
SIGCHLD
signals remain pending.
If
SIGCHLD
is blocked,
wait ();
returns because the status of a child process is available, the pending
SIGCHLD
signal will be cleared unless another status of the child process
is available.
RETURN VALUES
If
wait ();
returns due to a stopped, continued,
or terminated child process, the process ID of the child
is returned to the calling process.
Otherwise, a value of -1
is returned and
errno
is set to indicate the error.
If
wait4 (,);
wait3 (,);
or
waitpid ();
returns due to a stopped, continued,
or terminated child process, the process ID of the child
is returned to the calling process.
If there are no children not previously awaited,
-1 is returned with
errno
set to
Er ECHILD .
Otherwise, if
WNOHANG
is specified and there are
no stopped, continued or exited children,
0 is returned.
If an error is detected or a caught signal aborts the call,
a value of -1
is returned and
errno
is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The
wait ();
function
will fail and return immediately if:
Bq Er ECHILD
The calling process has no existing unwaited-for
child processes.
Bq Er ECHILD
No status from the terminated child process is available
because the calling process has asked the system to discard
such status by ignoring the signal
SIGCHLD
or setting the flag
SA_NOCLDWAIT
for that signal.
Bq Er EFAULT
The
Fa status
or
Fa rusage
argument points to an illegal address.
(May not be detected before exit of a child process.)
Bq Er EINTR
The call was interrupted by a caught signal,
or the signal did not have the
SA_RESTART
flag set.
The
wait ();
and
waitpid ();
functions are defined by POSIX;
wait4 ();
and
wait3 ();
are not specified by POSIX.
The
WCOREDUMP ();
macro
and the ability to restart a pending
wait ();
call are extensions to the POSIX interface.
HISTORY
The
wait ();
function appeared in
AT&T System
v6 .