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.TH PAUSE "3P" 2013 "IEEE/The Open Group" "POSIX Programmer's Manual"

.SH 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.

.SH NAME

pause

\(em suspend the thread until a signal is received

.SH SYNOPSIS

.LP

.nf

#include <unistd.h>

.P

int pause(void);

.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION

The

\fIpause\fR()

function shall suspend the calling thread until delivery of a signal

whose action is either to execute a signal-catching function or to

terminate the process.

.P

If the action is to terminate the process,

\fIpause\fR()

shall not return.

.P

If the action is to execute a signal-catching function,

\fIpause\fR()

shall return after the signal-catching function returns.

.SH "RETURN VALUE"

Since

\fIpause\fR()

suspends thread execution indefinitely unless interrupted by a signal,

there is no successful completion return value. A value of \(mi1 shall

be returned and

.IR errno

set to indicate the error.

.SH ERRORS

The

\fIpause\fR()

function shall fail if:

.TP

.BR EINTR

A signal is caught by the calling process and control is returned from

the signal-catching function.

.LP

.IR "The following sections are informative."

.SH EXAMPLES

None.

.SH "APPLICATION USAGE"

Many common uses of

\fIpause\fR()

have timing windows. The scenario involves checking a condition

related to a signal and, if the signal has not occurred, calling

\fIpause\fR().

When the signal occurs between the check and the call to

\fIpause\fR(),

the process often blocks indefinitely. The

\fIsigprocmask\fR()

and

\fIsigsuspend\fR()

functions can be used to avoid this type of problem.

.SH RATIONALE

None.

.SH "FUTURE DIRECTIONS"

None.

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.IR "\fIsigsuspend\fR\^(\|)"

.P

The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1\(hy2008,

.IR "\fB<unistd.h>\fP"

.SH 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

Electrical 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.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .