waitpid#

Synopsis#

#include <sys/wait.h>

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

pid_t wait(int *status);

Status#

Partially implemented

Conformance#

IEEE Std 1003.1-2017

Description#

The wait() and waitpid() functions shall obtain status information pertaining to one of the caller’s child processes. The wait() function obtains status information for process termination from any child process. The waitpid() function obtains status information for process termination, and optionally process stop and/or continue, from a specified subset of the child processes.

The wait() function shall cause the calling thread to become blocked until status information generated by child process termination is made available to the thread, or until delivery of a signal whose action is either to execute a signal-catching function or to terminate the process, or an error occurs. If termination status information is available prior to the call to wait(), return shall be immediate. If termination status information is available for two or more child processes, the order in which their status is reported is unspecified.

The wait() and waitpid() functions consume the status information they obtain.

The behavior when multiple threads are blocked in wait(), waitid(), or waitpid() is described in Status Information.

The waitpid() function shall be equivalent to wait() if the pid argument is (pid_t)-1 and the options argument is 0. Otherwise, its behavior shall be modified by the values of the pid and options arguments.

The pid argument specifies a set of child processes for which status is requested. The waitpid() function shall only return the status of a child process from this set:

If pid is equal to (pid_t)-1, status is requested for any child process. In this respect, waitpid() is then equivalent to wait().
If pid is greater than 0, it specifies the process ID of a single child process for which status is requested.
If pid is 0, status is requested for any child process whose process group ID is equal to that of the calling process.
If pid is less than (pid_t)-1, status is requested for any child process whose process group ID is equal to the absolute value of pid.

The options argument is constructed from the bitwise-inclusive OR of zero or more of the following flags, defined in the <sys/wait.h> header:

WCONTINUED - The waitpid() function shall report the status of any continued child process specified by pid whose status has not been reported since it continued from a job control stop.
WNOHANG - The waitpid() function shall not suspend execution of the calling thread if status is not immediately available for one of the child processes specified by pid.
WUNTRACED - The status of any child processes specified by pid that are stopped, and whose status has not yet been reported since they stopped, shall also be reported to the requesting process.

If wait() or waitpid() return because the status of a child process is available, these functions shall return a value equal to the process ID of the child process. In this case, if the value of the argument stat_loc is not a null pointer, information shall be stored in the location pointed to by stat_loc. The value stored at the location pointed to by stat_loc shall be 0 if and only if the status returned is from a terminated child process that terminated by one of the following means:

The process returned 0 from main().
The process called _exit() or exit() with a status argument of 0.
The process was terminated because the last thread in the process terminated.

Regardless of its value, this information may be interpreted using the following macros, which are defined in <sys/wait.h> and evaluate to integral expressions; the stat_val argument is the integer value pointed to by stat_loc.

WIFEXITED(stat_val) - Evaluates to a non-zero value if status was returned for a child process that terminated normally.
WEXITSTATUS(stat_val) - If the value of WIFEXITED(stat_val) is non-zero, this macro evaluates to the low-order 8 bits of the status argument that the child process passed to _exit() or exit(), or the value the child process returned from main().
WIFSIGNALED(stat_val) - Evaluates to a non-zero value if status was returned for a child process that terminated due to the receipt of a signal that was not caught (see <signal.h>).
WTERMSIG(stat_val) - If the value of WIFSIGNALED(stat_val) is non-zero, this macro evaluates to the number of the signal that caused the termination of the child process.
WIFSTOPPED(stat_val) - Evaluates to a non-zero value if status was returned for a child process that is currently stopped.
WSTOPSIG(stat_val) - If the value of WIFSTOPPED(stat_val) is non-zero, this macro evaluates to the number of the signal that caused the child process to stop.
WIFCONTINUED(stat_val) - Evaluates to a non-zero value if status was returned for a child process that has continued from a job control stop.

It is unspecified whether the status value returned by calls to wait() or waitpid() for processes created by posix_spawn() or posix_spawnp() can indicate a WIFSTOPPED(stat_val) before subsequent calls to wait() or waitpid() indicate WIFEXITED(stat_val) as the result of an error detected before the new process image starts executing.

It is unspecified whether the status value returned by calls to wait() or waitpid() for processes created by posix_spawn() or posix_spawnp() can indicate a WIFSIGNALED(stat_val) if a signal is sent to the parent’s process group after posix_spawn() or posix_spawnp() is called.

If the information pointed to by stat_loc was stored by a call to waitpid() that specified the WUNTRACED flag and did not specify the WCONTINUED flag, exactly one of the macros WIFEXITED(stat_loc), WIFSIGNALED(stat_loc), and WIFSTOPPED(stat_loc) shall evaluate to a non-zero value.

If the information pointed to by stat_loc was stored by a call to waitpid() that specified the WUNTRACED and WCONTINUED flags, exactly one of the macros WIFEXITED(stat_loc), WIFSIGNALED(stat_loc), WIFSTOPPED(stat_loc), and WIFCONTINUED(stat_loc) shall evaluate to a non-zero value.

If the information pointed to by stat_loc was stored by a call to waitpid() that did not specify the WUNTRACED or WCONTINUED flags, or by a call to the wait() function, exactly one of the macros WIFEXITED(stat_loc) and WIFSIGNALED(stat_loc) shall evaluate to a non-zero value.

If the information pointed to by stat_loc was stored by a call to waitpid() that did not specify the WUNTRACED flag and specified the WCONTINUED flag, exactly one of the macros WIFEXITED(stat_loc), WIFSIGNALED(stat_loc), and WIFCONTINUED(stat_loc) shall evaluate to a non-zero value.

If _POSIX_REALTIME_SIGNALS is defined, and the implementation queues the SIGCHLD signal, then if wait() or waitpid() returns because the status of a child process is available, any pending SIGCHLD signal associated with the process ID of the child process shall be discarded. Any other pending SIGCHLD signals shall remain pending.

Otherwise, if SIGCHLD is blocked, if wait() or waitpid() return because the status of a child process is available, any pending SIGCHLD signal shall be cleared unless the status of another child process is available.

For all other conditions, it is unspecified whether child status will be available when a SIGCHLDsignal is delivered.

There may be additional implementation-defined circumstances under which wait() or waitpid() report status.

This shall not occur unless the calling process or one of its child processes explicitly makes use of a non-standard extension. In these cases the interpretation of the reported status is implementation-defined.

If a parent process terminates without waiting for all of its child processes to terminate, the remaining child processes shall be assigned a new parent process ID corresponding to an implementation-defined system process.

Return value#

wait() or waitpid() shall return a value equal to the process ID of the child process for which status is reported. If wait() or waitpid() returns due to the delivery of a signal to the calling process, EINTR. If waitpid() was invoked with WNOHANG set in options, it has at least one child process specified by pid for which status is not available, and status is not available for any process specified by pid, 0 is returned. Otherwise, -1 shall be returned, and errno set to indicate the error.

Errors#

The wait() function shall fail if:

ECHILD - the calling process has no existing unwaited-for child processes.
EINTR - the function was interrupted by a signal. The value of the location pointed to by stat_loc is undefined.

The waitpid() function shall fail if:

ECHILD - the process specified by pid does not exist or is not a child of the calling process, or the process group specified by pid does not exist or does not have any member process that is a child of the calling process.
EINTR - the function was interrupted by a signal. The value of the location pointed to by stat_loc is undefined.
EINVAL - the options argument is not valid.

Tests#

Untested

Known bugs#

Description
- WIFSTOPPED(stat_val), WSTOPSIG(stat_val), WIFCONTINUED(stat_val) always return 0
- WNOHANG option does not work (Issue link)
- waitpid() does not discard a pending SIGCHLDsignal that is associated with a successfully waited-for child process. (Issue link)