wait(2)wait(2)Name
wait, wait3, waitpid - wait for process to terminate
Syntax
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
pid = wait(status)
pid_t pid;
union wait *status;
pid = wait((union wait*)0)
pid_t pid;
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/resource.h>
pid = wait3(status, options, rusage)
pid_t pid;
union wait *status;
int options;
struct rusage *rusage;
pid = waitpid(pid, status, options)
pid_t pid;
union wait *status;
int options;
Description
The system call causes its caller to delay either until a signal is
received or one of its child processes terminates. If a child process
has died since the last return is immediate, returning the process id
and exit status of one of the terminated child processes. If a child
process does not exist, return is immediate, with the value -1
returned.
On return from a successful call, if status is nonzero, the high byte
of status contains the low byte of the argument to exit supplied by the
child process; the low byte of status contains the termination status
of the process. A more precise definition of the status word is given
in
The system call provides an alternate interface for programs that must
not block when collecting the status of child processes. The status
parameter is defined as above. The options parameter is used to indi‐
cate that the call should not block if there are no processes that wish
to report status (WNOHANG), or that only children of the current
process, which are stopped due to a SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, SIGTSTP, or
SIGSTOP signal, should have their status reported (WUNTRACED). If
rusage is nonzero, a summary of the resources used by the terminated
process and all its children is returned (this information is not
available for stopped processes).
When the WNOHANG option is specified and no processes wish to report
status, returns a pid of zero (0). The WNOHANG and WUNTRACED options
can be combined by ORing the two values.
See for a list of termination statuses (signals). A 0 status indicates
normal termination. A special status (0177) is returned for a process
stopped by the process tracing mechanism, If the 0200 bit of the termi‐
nation status is set, a core image of the process was produced by the
system.
If the parent process terminates without waiting on its children, the
initialization process (process ID = 1) inherits the children.
The system call provides an interface for programs that want to wait
for a specific child process or child processes from specific process
groups. The system call behaves as follows:
· If pid is equal to -1, status is requested for any child process.
· If pid is greater than zero, it specifies the process ID of a sin‐
gle child process for which status is requested.
· If pid is equal to zero, status is requested for any child process
whose process group ID is equal to that of the calling process.
· If pid is less than -1, status is requested for any child process
whose process group ID is equal to the absolute value of pid.
The status and options arguments are defined as above. The system call
behaves identically to the system call, if the pid argument has a value
of -1 and the options argument has a value of zero (0).
The and system calls are automatically restarted when a process
receives a signal while awaiting termination of a child process, unless
the SV_INTERRUPT bit has been set for that signal. See
The following macros, defined in can be used to interpret the informa‐
tion contained in the status parameter returned by the wait functions;
the stat_val argument is the value pointed to by the status argument.
WIFEXITED(stat_val)
Evaluates to a nonzero value, if status was returned for a child
process that terminated normally.
WEXITSTATUS(stat_val)
If the value of WIFEXITED(stat_val) is nonzero, this macro eval‐
uates to the low-order eight bits of the status argument that
the child process passes to or or the value the child process
returned from
WIFSIGNALED(stat_val)
Evaluates to a nonzero value, if status was returned for a child
process that terminated due to the receipt of a signal that was
not caught.
WTERMSIG(stat_val)
If the value of WIFSIGNALED(stat_val) is nonzero, this macro
evaluates to the number of the signal that caused the termina‐
tion of the child process.
WIFSTOPPED(stat_val)
Evaluates to a nonzero value, if status was returned for a child
process that is currently stopped.
WSTOPSIG(stat_val)
If the value of WIFSTOPPED(stat_val) is nonzero, this macro
evaluates to the number of the signal that caused the child
process to stop.
Return Values
If or returns due to a stopped 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.
The and system calls return -1, if there are no children not previously
waited for. A value of zero (0) is returned, if WNOHANG is specified
and there are no stopped or exited children.
Environment
SYSTEM_FIVE
When your program is compiled using the System V environment, when the
SIGCLD signal is being ignored, continues until all children terminate.
SIGCLD is the same as SIGCHLD.
In addition, when using the System V environment, status is of type int
*.
POSIX
When using the POSIX environment, status is of type int *.
In addition, the SV_INTERRUPT flag is always set in POSIX mode, causing
the above system calls to always fail, if interrupted by a signal.
Diagnostics
The or system calls fail and return is immediate, if any of the follow‐
ing is true:
[ECHILD] The calling process has no existing unwaited-for child
processes.
[ECHILD] The process or process group specified by pid does not
exist or is not a child of the calling process.
[EINTR] The function was interrupted by a signal. The value of
the location pointed to by status is undefined.
[EINVAL] The value of the options argument is not valid.
[EFAULT] The status or rusage arguments point to an illegal
address.
See Alsoexit(2), ptrace(2), sigvec(2)wait(2)
