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WAIT(1P)		   POSIX Programmer's Manual		      WAIT(1P)

PROLOG
       This  manual  page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the	 corresponding
       Linux  manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
       not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
       wait — await process completion

SYNOPSIS
       wait [pid...]

DESCRIPTION
       When an asynchronous list (see Section 2.9.3.1, Examples) is started by
       the  shell,  the	 process ID of the last command in each element of the
       asynchronous list shall become known in	the  current  shell  execution
       environment; see Section 2.12, Shell Execution Environment.

       If  the	wait  utility is invoked with no operands, it shall wait until
       all process IDs known to the invoking shell have	 terminated  and  exit
       with a zero exit status.

       If  one or more pid operands are specified that represent known process
       IDs, the wait utility shall wait until all of them have terminated.  If
       one  or	more pid operands are specified that represent unknown process
       IDs, wait shall treat them as if	 they  were  known  process  IDs  that
       exited with exit status 127. The exit status returned by the wait util‐
       ity shall be the exit status of the process requested by the  last  pid
       operand.

       The  known  process  IDs are applicable only for invocations of wait in
       the current shell execution environment.

OPTIONS
       None.

OPERANDS
       The following operand shall be supported:

       pid	 One of the following:

		  1. The unsigned decimal integer process ID of a command, for
		     which the utility is to wait for the termination.

		  2. A	job control job ID (see the Base Definitions volume of
		     POSIX.1‐2008, Section 3.204, Job  Control	Job  ID)  that
		     identifies	 a  background process group to be waited for.
		     The job control job ID notation is	 applicable  only  for
		     invocations  of wait in the current shell execution envi‐
		     ronment; see Section 2.12, Shell  Execution  Environment.
		     The  exit	status of wait shall be determined by the last
		     command in the pipeline.

		     Note:     The job control job ID  type  of	 pid  is  only
			       available on systems supporting the User Porta‐
			       bility Utilities option.

STDIN
       Not used.

INPUT FILES
       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of wait:

       LANG	 Provide a default value for  the  internationalization	 vari‐
		 ables	that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions vol‐
		 ume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization	 Vari‐
		 ables	for  the  precedence of internationalization variables
		 used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL	 If set to a non-empty string value, override  the  values  of
		 all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE	 Determine  the	 locale for the interpretation of sequences of
		 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as
		 opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).

       LC_MESSAGES
		 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format
		 and contents  of  diagnostic  messages	 written  to  standard
		 error.

       NLSPATH	 Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing
		 of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       Default.

STDOUT
       Not used.

STDERR
       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES
       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
       None.

EXIT STATUS
       If one or more operands were specified, all of them have terminated  or
       were  not known by the invoking shell, and the status of the last oper‐
       and specified is known, then the exit status of wait shall be the  exit
       status  information of the command indicated by the last operand speci‐
       fied. If the process terminated abnormally due to the receipt of a sig‐
       nal,  the  exit	status shall be greater than 128 and shall be distinct
       from the exit status generated by other signals, but the exact value is
       unspecified.  (See  the	kill  −l  option.) Otherwise, the wait utility
       shall exit with one of the following values:

	   0   The wait utility was invoked with no operands and  all  process
	       IDs known by the invoking shell have terminated.

       1‐126   The wait utility detected an error.

	 127   The  command  identified	 by  the last pid operand specified is
	       unknown.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
       On most implementations, wait is a shell built-in. If it is called in a
       subshell	 or separate utility execution environment, such as one of the
       following:

	   (wait)
	   nohup wait ...
	   find . −exec wait ... \;

       it returns immediately because there are no known process IDs  to  wait
       for in those environments.

       Historical  implementations  of	interactive  shells have discarded the
       exit status  of	terminated  background	processes  before  each	 shell
       prompt.	Therefore, the status of background processes was usually lost
       unless it terminated while wait was waiting for it.  This  could	 be  a
       serious	problem	 when  a  job that was expected to run for a long time
       actually terminated quickly  with  a  syntax  or	 initialization	 error
       because	the  exit  status  returned  was usually zero if the requested
       process ID was not found. This  volume  of  POSIX.1‐2008	 requires  the
       implementation  to  keep	 the status of terminated jobs available until
       the status is requested, so that scripts like:

	   j1&
	   p1=$!
	   j2&
	   wait $p1
	   echo Job 1 exited with status $?
	   wait $!
	   echo Job 2 exited with status $?

       work without losing status on any of the jobs. The shell is allowed  to
       discard the status of any process if it determines that the application
       cannot get the process ID for that process from the shell. It  is  also
       required	 to remember only {CHILD_MAX} number of processes in this way.
       Since the only way to get the process ID from the shell is by using the
       '!'   shell parameter, the shell is allowed to discard the status of an
       asynchronous list if "$!" was not referenced before  another  asynchro‐
       nous  list was started. (This means that the shell only has to keep the
       status of the last asynchronous list started if the application did not
       reference  "$!".	 If the implementation of the shell is smart enough to
       determine that a reference to "$!" was  not  saved  anywhere  that  the
       application  can retrieve it later, it can use this information to trim
       the list of saved information. Note also that a successful call to wait
       with no operands discards the exit status of all asynchronous lists.)

       If the exit status of wait is greater than 128, there is no way for the
       application to know if the waited-for process exited with that value or
       was  killed  by a signal.  Since most utilities exit with small values,
       there is seldom any ambiguity. Even in the ambiguous cases, most appli‐
       cations just need to know that the asynchronous job failed; it does not
       matter whether it detected an error and failed or was  killed  and  did
       not complete its job normally.

EXAMPLES
       Although	 the exact value used when a process is terminated by a signal
       is unspecified, if it is known that a signal terminated	a  process,  a
       script can still reliably determine which signal by using kill as shown
       by the following script:

	   sleep 1000&
	   pid=$!
	   kill −kill $pid
	   wait $pid
	   echo $pid was terminated by a SIG$(kill −l $?) signal.

       If the following sequence of commands is run in less than 31 seconds:

	   sleep 257 | sleep 31 &
	   jobs −l %%

       either of the following commands returns the exit status of the	second
       sleep in the pipeline:

	   wait <pid of sleep 31>
	   wait %%

RATIONALE
       The  description	 of wait does not refer to the waitpid() function from
       the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008 because that  would	 need‐
       lessly overspecify this interface. However, the wording means that wait
       is required to wait for an explicit process when it is given  an	 argu‐
       ment so that the status information of other processes is not consumed.
       Historical implementations use the wait() function defined in the  Sys‐
       tem   Interfaces	 volume	 of  POSIX.1‐2008  until  wait()  returns  the
       requested process ID or finds  that  the	 requested  process  does  not
       exist.  Because	this  means that a shell script could not reliably get
       the status of all background children if a second  background  job  was
       ever  started before the first job finished, it is recommended that the
       wait utility use a method such as the  functionality  provided  by  the
       waitpid() function.

       The  ability  to	 wait  for  multiple pid operands was adopted from the
       KornShell.

       This new functionality was added because it is needed to determine  the
       exit status of any asynchronous list accurately. The only compatibility
       problem that this change creates is for a script like

	   while sleep 60 do
	       job& echo Job started $(date) as $!  done

       which causes the shell to monitor all of the  jobs  started  until  the
       script terminates or runs out of memory. This would not be a problem if
       the loop did not reference "$!" or if  the  script  would  occasionally
       wait for jobs it started.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       Chapter 2, Shell Command Language, kill, sh

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 3.204, Job Control
       Job ID, Chapter 8, Environment Variables

       The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008, wait()

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in  electronic  form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
       -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX),	The  Open  Group  Base
       Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
       cal and Electronics Engineers,  Inc  and	 The  Open  Group.   (This  is
       POSIX.1-2008  with  the	2013  Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
       event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
       The  Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
       is the referee document. The original Standard can be  obtained	online
       at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any  typographical  or  formatting  errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
       files  to  man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker‐
       nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group		     2013			      WAIT(1P)
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