The waitpid function suspends the calling process until the request is completed. It is redefined so that only the calling thread is suspended. If the process_id argument is -1 and the options argument is 0, the waitpid function behaves the same as the wait function. If these arguments have other values, the waitpid function is changed as specified by those values. The process_id argument allows the calling process to gather status from a specific set of child processes, according to the following rules: If the process_ id is Then status is requested Equal to -1 For any child process. In this respect, the waitpid function is equivalent to the wait function. Greater than For a single child process and specifies the 0 process ID. The waitpid function only returns the status of a child process from this set. The options argument to the waitpid function modifies the behavior of the function. You can combine the flags for the options argument by specifying their bitwise-inclusive OR. The flags are: WCONTINUED Specifies that the following is reported to the calling process: the status of any continued child process specified by the process_id argument whose status is unreported since it continued. WNOWAIT Specifies that the process whose status is returned in status_location is kept in a waitable state. You can wait for the process again with the same results. WNOHANG Prevents the calling process from being suspended. If there are child processes that stopped or terminated, one is chosen and waitpid returns its PID, as when you do not specify the WNOHANG flag. If there are no terminated processes (that is, if waitpid suspends the calling process without the WNOHANG flag), 0 (zero) is returned. Because you can never wait for process 0, there is no confusion arising from this return. WUNTRACED Specifies that the call return additional information when the child processes of the current process stop because the child process received a SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, SIGSTOP, or SIGTSTOP signal. If the waitpid function returns because the status of a child process is available, the process ID of the child process is returned. Information is stored in the location pointed to by status_location, if this pointer is not null. The value stored in the location pointed to by status_location is 0 only if the status is returned from a terminated child process that did one of the following: o Returned 0 from the main function. o Passed 0 as the status argument to the _exit or exit function. Regardless of the value of status_location, you can define this information using the macros defined in the <wait.h> header file, which evaluate to integral expressions. In the following function descriptions, status_value is equal to the integer value pointed to by status_location: WIFEXITED(status_ Evaluates to a nonzero value if status was value) returned for a child process that terminated normally. WEXITSTATUS(status_If the value of WIFEXITED(status_value) is value) nonzero, this macro evaluates to the low-order 8 bits of the status argument that the child process passed to the _exit or exit function, or to the value the child process returned from the main function. WIFSIGNALED(status_Evaluates to a nonzero value if status value) returned for a child process that terminated due to the receipt of a signal not intercepted. WTERMSIG(status_ If the value of WIFSIGNALED(status_value) is value) nonzero, this macro evaluates to the number of the signal that caused the termination of the child process. WIFSTOPPED(status_ Evaluates to a nonzero value if status was value) returned for a child process that is currently stopped. WSTOPSIG(status_ If the value of WIFSTOPPED(status_value) is value) nonzero, this macro evaluates to the number of the signal that caused the child process to stop. WIFCONTINUED(status_valuates to a nonzero value if status value) returned for a child process that continued. If the information stored at the location pointed to by status_ location is stored there by a call to waitpid that specified the WUNTRACED flag, one of the following macros evaluates to a nonzero value: o WIFEXITED(*status_value) o WIFSIGNALED(*status_value) o WIFSTOPPED(*status_value) o WIFCONTINUED(*status_value) If the information stored in the buffer pointed to by status_ location resulted from a call to waitpid without the WUNTRACED flag specified, one of the following macros evaluates to a nonzero value: o WIFEXITED(*status_value) o WIFSIGNALED(*status_value) If a parent process terminates without waiting for all of its child processes to terminate, the remaining child processes is assigned a parent process ID equal to the process ID of the init process. See also exit, _exit, and wait.