WAIT(2) 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 short inte-
ger (sic) 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. If integers are
wider than shorts, the higher-order bytes are undefined.
See signal(2) for a list of termination statuses (signals);
0 status indicates normal termination. A special status
(0177) is returned for a process which has stopped but can
be restarted; see signal(2). If the 0200 bit of the termina-
tion 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) inher-
its the children.
SEE ALSO
exit(2), fork(2), signal(2), sh(1)
DIAGNOSTICS
Returns -1 if there are no children not previously waited
for.
BUGS
Status points to an integer; only the low two bytes are
meaningful, but all bytes are written.