NAME
wait —
await process completion
SYNOPSIS
wait |
[pid] |
DESCRIPTION
If invoked with no arguments, thewait utility waits
until all existing child processes in the background have terminated.
Available operands:
- pid
- If a pid operand is specified, and it is the process
ID of a background child process that still exists, the
waitutility waits until that process has completed and consumes its status information, without consuming the status information of any other process.If a pid operand is specified that is not the process ID of a child background process that still exists,
waitexits without waiting for any processes to complete.
The wait utility exits with one of the
following values:
- 0
- The
waitutility was invoked with no operands and all of the existing background child processes have terminated, or the process specified by the pid operand exited normally with 0 as its exit status. - >0
- The specified process did not exist and its exit status information was not available, or the specified process existed or its exit status information was available, and it terminated with a non-zero exit status.
If the specified process terminated abnormally due to the receipt
of a signal, the exit status information of wait
contains that termination status as well.
STANDARDS
The wait command is expected to be
IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”)
compatible.