fork(), waitpid()

NAME
fork - create a child process

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>

pid_t fork(void);

RETURN VALUE
On success, the PID of the child process is returned in the parent, and
0 is returned in the child. On failure, -1 is returned in the parent,
no child process is created, and errno is set appropriately.

 

NAME
wait, waitpid, waitid - wait for process to change state

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>

pid_t wait(int *status);

pid_t waitpid(pid_t pid, int *status, int options);

int waitid(idtype_t idtype, id_t id, siginfo_t *infop, int options);
/* This is the glibc and POSIX interface; see
NOTES for information on the raw system call. */

 

DESCRIPTION
All of these system calls are used to wait for state changes in a child of the calling process, and obtain information about the child whose state has changed. A state change is considered to
be: the child terminated; the child was stopped by a signal; or the child was resumed by a signal. In the case of a terminated child, performing a wait allows the system to release the
resources associated with the child; if a wait is not performed, then the terminated child remains in a "zombie" state (see NOTES below).

If a child has already changed state, then these calls return immediately. Otherwise they block until either a child changes state or a signal handler interrupts the call (assuming that sys‐
tem calls are not automatically restarted using the SA_RESTART flag of sigaction(2)). In the remainder of this page, a child whose state has changed and which has not yet been waited upon by
one of these system calls is termed waitable.

wait() and waitpid()
The wait() system call suspends execution of the calling process until one of its children terminates. The call wait(&status) is equivalent to:

waitpid(-1, &status, 0);

The waitpid() system call suspends execution of the calling process until a child specified by pid argument has changed state. By default, waitpid() waits only for terminated children, but
this behavior is modifiable via the options argument, as described below.

The value of pid can be:

< -1 meaning wait for any child process whose process group ID is equal to the absolute value of pid.

-1 meaning wait for any child process.

0 meaning wait for any child process whose process group ID is equal to that of the calling process.

> 0 meaning wait for the child whose process ID is equal to the value of pid.

The value of options is an OR of zero or more of the following constants:

WNOHANG return immediately if no child has exited.

WUNTRACED also return if a child has stopped (but not traced via ptrace(2)). Status for traced children which have stopped is provided even if this option is not specified.

WCONTINUED (since Linux 2.6.10)
also return if a stopped child has been resumed by delivery of SIGCONT.

(For Linux-only options, see below.)

If status is not NULL, wait() and waitpid() store status information in the int to which it points. This integer can be inspected with the following macros (which take the integer itself as
an argument, not a pointer to it, as is done in wait() and waitpid()!):

WIFEXITED(status)
returns true if the child terminated normally, that is, by calling exit(3) or _exit(2), or by returning from main().

WEXITSTATUS(status)
returns the exit status of the child. This consists of the least significant 8 bits of the status argument that the child specified in a call to exit(3) or _exit(2) or as the argument