waitpid()

Wait for a child process to stop or terminate

Synopsis:

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

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

Arguments:

pid

The set of child processes that you want to get status information for:

less than -1 — any child process whose process group ID is equal to the absolute value of pid.
-1 — any child process.
0 — any child process whose process group ID is equal to that of the calling process.
greater than 0 — the single child process with this ID.

stat_loc

NULL, or a pointer a location where the function can store the terminating status of the child process. For information about macros that extract information from this status, see “Status macros” in the documentation for wait().

options

A combination of zero or more of the following flags:

WCONTINUED — return the status for any child that was stopped and has been continued.
WNOHANG — return immediately if there are no children to wait for.
WSTOPPED — wait for and return the process status of any child that has stopped because it received a signal.
WUNTRACED — report the status of a stopped child process. In QNX Neutrino, this is the same as WSTOPPED.

Library:

libc

Use the -l c option to qcc to link against this library. This library is usually included automatically.

Description:

The waitpid() function suspends execution of the calling thread until status information from one of its terminated child processes is available, or until the delivery of a signal whose action is either to terminate the process or execute a signal handler. If status information is available prior to the call to waitpid(), the return is immediate.

Note:

In order to wait for the status of a terminated child process whose real or saved user ID is different from the calling process's real or effective user ID, your process must have the PROCMGR_AID_WAIT ability enabled. For more information, see procmgr_ability().
If the parent process sets the action for SIGCHLD to SIG_IGN, its children won't enter the zombie state, and it won't be able to use the wait*() functions to wait on their deaths.
If the calling process is a guardian, it may wait on processes that are not its children (see procmgr_guardian()).

The waitpid() function behaves the same as wait() when passed a pid argument of -1, and the options argument has a value of zero.

Only one of the WIFEXITED(stat_val) and WIFSIGNALED(stat_val) macros can evaluate to a nonzero value.

Returns:

The process ID of the terminating child process on success. If waitpid() is invoked with WNOHANG set in options, it has at least one child process specified by pid for which status isn't available, and status isn't available for any process specified by pid, a value of zero is returned. On delivery of a signal, waitpid() returns -1, and errno is set to EINTR.

Errors:

ECHILD: The calling process has no existing unwaited-for child processes that meet the criteria set by pid.
EINTR: The function was interrupted by a signal. The value of the location pointed to by stat_loc is undefined.
EINVAL: The value of the options argument isn't valid.
EPERM: The calling process doesn't have the required permission; see procmgr_ability().

Classification:

POSIX 1003.1

Safety:
Cancellation point	Yes
Interrupt handler	No
Signal handler	Yes
Thread	Yes