Updated: 2022/Sep/29

Please read Privacy Policy. It's for your privacy.

WAIT(1)                     General Commands Manual                    WAIT(1)

NAME
     wait - await process completion

SYNOPSIS
     wait [pid]

DESCRIPTION
     If invoked with no arguments, the wait 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 wait utility
             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, wait exits without
             waiting for any processes to complete.

     The wait utility exits with one of the following values:

     0       The wait utility 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.

NetBSD 10.99                     June 5, 1993                     NetBSD 10.99