NAME

waitid − wait for child process to change state

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/wait.h>

int waitid(idtype_t idtype, id_t id, siginfo_t *infop, int options);

DESCRIPTION

The waitid() function suspends the calling process until one of its children changes state. It records the current state of a child in the structure pointed to by infop. If a child process changed state prior to the call to waitid(), waitid() returns immediately. 

The idtype and id arguments are used to specify which children waitid() will wait for. 

If idtype is P_PID, waitid() will wait for the child with a process ID equal to (pid_t)pid.

If idtypeis P_PGID, waitid() will wait for any child with a process group ID equal to (pid_t)pid.

If idtypeis P_ALL, waitid() will wait for any children and id is ignored. 

The options argument is used to specify which state changes waitid() will wait for. It is formed by OR−ing together one or more of the following flags:

WEXITED Wait for processes that have exited. 

WSTOPPED Status will be returned for any child that has stopped upon receipt of a signal. 

WCONTINUED Status will be returned for any child that was stopped and has been continued. 

WNOHANG Return immediately if there  are  no children to wait for. 

WNOWAIT Keep the process whose status is returned in infop in a waitable state. This will not affect the state of the process; the process may be waited for again after this call completes. 

The infop argument must point to a siginfo_t structure. If waitid() returns because a child process was found that satisfied the conditions indicated by the arguments idtype and options, then the structure pointed to by infop will be filled in by the system with the status of the process. The si_signo member will always be equal to SIGCHLD. 

RETURN VALUE

If waitid() returns due to the change of state of one of its children, 0 is returned. Otherwise, −1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error. 

ERRORS

The waitid() function will fail if:

[ECHILD] The calling process has no existing unwaited−for child processes. 

[EINTR] The waitid() function was interrupted due to the receipt of a signal by the calling process. 

[EINVAL] An invalid value was specified for options, or idtype and id specify an invalid set of processes. 

SEE ALSO

exec, exit(), wait(), <sys/wait.h>. 

CHANGE HISTORY

First released in Issue 4, Version 2. 

Hewlett-Packard Company  —  HP-UX Release 10.20:  July 1996