The wait4 function suspends the calling process until the request is completed. 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 wait4 function only returns the status of a child process from this set. The options argument to the wait4 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: 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 suspension of the calling process. If there are child processes that stopped or terminated, one is chosen and the waitpid function returns its process ID, 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 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 wait4 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 status_location value, you can define this information using the macros defined in the <wait.h> header file, which evaluate to integral expressions. In the following macro 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 was value) returned for a child process that terminated due to the receipt of a signal that was 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) was returned for a child process that has continued. If the information stored at the location pointed to by status_ location was stored there by a call to wait4 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 location pointed to by status_ location resulted from a call to wait4 without the WUNTRACED flag specified, one of the following macros evaluates to a nonzero value: o WIFEXITED(*status_value) o WIFSIGNALED(*status_value) The wait4 function is similar to the wait3 function. However, the wait4 function waits for a specific child as indicated by the process_id argument. The resource_usage argument points to a location that contains resource usage information for the child processes as defined in the <resource.h> header file. See also exit and _exit.