wait

Section: C Library Functions (3)
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NAME

wait - check child process status

SYNTAX

#include <wait.h>

int wait_nohang(&wstat);
int wait_stop(&wstat);
int wait_stopnohang(&wstat);
int wait_pid(&wstat,pid);

int wait_exitcode(wstat);
int wait_crashed(wstat);
int wait_stopped(wstat);
int wait_stopsig(wstat);

int pid;
int wstat;

DESCRIPTION

wait_nohang looks for zombies (child processes that have exited). If it sees a zombie, it eliminates the zombie, puts the zombie's exit status into wstat, and returns the zombie's process ID. If there are several zombies, wait_nohang picks one. If there are children but no zombies, wait_nohang returns 0. If there are no children, wait_nohang returns -1, setting errno appropriately.

wait_stopnohang is similar to wait_nohang, but it also looks for children that have stopped.

wait_stop is similar to wait_stopnohang, but if there are children it will pause waiting for one of them to stop or exit.

wait_pid waits for child process pid to exit. It eliminates any zombie that shows up in the meantime, discarding the exit status.

wait_stop and wait_pid retry upon error_intr.

STATUS PARSING

If the child stopped, wait_stopped is nonzero; wait_stopsig is the signal that caused the child to stop.

If the child exited by crashing, wait_stopped is zero; wait_crashed is nonzero.

If the child exited normally, wait_stopped is zero; wait_crashed is zero; and wait_exitcode is the child's exit code.