WAIT(2) System Calls Manual WAIT(2)NAME
wait - wait for process to terminate
SYNOPSIS
wait(status)
int *status;
wait(0)DESCRIPTION
Wait causes its caller to delay until a signal is received or one of its child processes terminates. If any child has died since the last
wait, return is immediate; if there are no children, return is immediate with the error bit set (resp. with a value of -1 returned). The
normal return yields the process ID of the terminated child. In the case of several children several wait calls are needed to learn of all
the deaths.
If (int)status is nonzero, the high byte of the word pointed to receives the low byte of the argument of exit when the child terminated.
The low byte receives the termination status of the process. See signal(2) for a list of termination statuses (signals); 0 status indi-
cates normal termination. A special status (0177) is returned for a stopped process which has not terminated and can be restarted. See
ptrace(2). If the 0200 bit of the termination 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.
SEE ALSO exit(2), fork(2), signal(2)DIAGNOSTICS
Returns -1 if there are no children not previously waited for.
ASSEMBLER
(wait = 7.)
sys wait
(process ID in r0)
(status in r1)
The high byte of the status is the low byte of r0 in the child at termination.
WAIT(2)
Check Out this Related Man Page
wait(3C) Standard C Library Functions wait(3C)NAME
wait - wait for child process to stop or terminate
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
pid_t wait(int *stat_loc);
DESCRIPTION
The wait() function will suspend execution of the calling thread until status information for one of its terminated child processes is
available, or until delivery of a signal whose action is either to execute a signal-catching function or to terminate the process. If more
than one thread is suspended in wait(), waitpid(3C), or waitid(2) awaiting termination of the same process, exactly one thread will return
the process status at the time of the target process termination. If status information is available prior to the call to wait(), return
will be immediate.
If wait() returns because the status of a child process is available, it returns the process ID of the child process. If the calling
process specified a non-zero value for stat_loc, the status of the child process is stored in the location pointed to by stat_loc. That
status can be evaluated with the macros described on the wait.h(3HEAD) manual page.
In the following, status is the object pointed to by stat_loc:
o If the child process terminated due to an _exit() call, the low order 8 bits of status will be 0 and the high order 8 bits will con-
tain the low order 7 bits of the argument that the child process passed to _exit(); see exit(2).
o If the child process terminated due to a signal, the high order 8 bits of status will be 0 and the low order 7bits will contain the
number of the signal that caused the termination. In addition, if WCOREFLG is set, a "core image" will have been produced; see sig-
nal.h(3HEAD) and wait.h(3HEAD).
One instance of a SIGCHLD signal is queued for each child process whose status has changed. If wait() returns because the status of a child
process is available, any pending SIGCHLD signal associated with the process ID of that child process is discarded. Any other pending
SIGCHLD signals remain pending.
If the calling process has SA_NOCLDWAIT set or has SIGCHLD set to SIG_IGN, and the process has no unwaited children that were transformed
into zombie processes, it will block until all of its children terminate, and wait() will fail and set errno to ECHILD.
If a parent process terminates without waiting for its child processes to terminate, the parent process ID of each child process is set to
1, with the initialization process inheriting the child processes; see intro(2).
RETURN VALUES
When wait() returns due to a terminated child process, the process ID of the child is returned to the calling process. Otherwise, -1 is
returned and errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The wait() function will fail if:
ECHILD The calling process has no existing unwaited-for child processes.
EINTR The function was interrupted by a signal.
USAGE
Since wait() blocks on a stopped child, a calling process wanting to see the return results of such a call should use waitpid(3C) or
waitid(2) instead of wait(). The wait() function is implemented as a call to waitpid(-1, stat_loc, 0).
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Interface Stability |Standard |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|MT-Level |Async-Signal-Safe |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
SEE ALSO intro(2), exec(2), exit(2), fork(2), pause(2), waitid(2), ptrace(3C), signal(3C), signal.h(3HEAD), waitpid(3C), wait.h(3HEAD),
attributes(5)SunOS 5.10 9 Jun 2004 wait(3C)