NAME
pause — suspend process until signal
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int pause(void);
DESCRIPTION
pause()
suspends the calling process until it receives a signal.
The signal must be one that is not currently set to be ignored
or blocked (masked) by the calling process.
If the signal causes termination of the calling process,
pause()
does not return.
If the signal is
caught
by the calling process and control is returned from
the signal-catching function (see
signal(5)),
the calling process resumes execution from the point of suspension;
with a return value of -1 from
pause()
and
errno
set to
EINTR.
WARNING
Check all references to
signal(5)
for appropriateness on systems that support
sigvector(2).
sigvector()
can affect the behavior described on this page.
APPLICATION USAGE
Threads Considerations
Signal dispositions (such as catch/default/ignore) are shared by all
threads in the process and blocked signal masks are maintained by each
thread. Therefore, the signals being waited for should not be ignored
by the process or blocked by the calling thread.
pause()
will suspend only the calling thread until it receives a signal.
If other threads in the process do not block the signal, the
signal may be delivered to another thread in the process and the
thread in
pause()
may continue waiting. For this reason,
the use of
sigwait()
is recommended instead of
pause()
for multi-threaded applications.
For more information regarding signals and threads, refer to
signal(5)
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
pause(): AES, SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, FIPS 151-2, POSIX.1
