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.