PAUSE(3)

okay so bestie, welcome to PAUSE(3) from the Library Functions Manual — yes, the manual name is folded right in because we're cute like that. This is the page for pause, and it's literally "stop until signal." 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

pause — stop until signal. That's the whole name, no cap. ✨

🫶 LIBRARY 🫶

Standard C Library (libc, -lc). Slay. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <unistd.h>

int
pause(void);

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so first thing: Pause is made obsolete by sigsuspend(2). Not me being dramatic, that's literally the man page. 💀

The pause() function forces a process to pause until a signal is received from either the kill(2) function or an interval timer. (See setitimer(2).) 🕰️

And upon termination of a signal handler started during a pause(), the pause() call will return. That's the whole loop, bestie. ✨

🔥 RETURN VALUES 🔥

Always returns -1. That's not a maybe, that's a periodt. 💀

😭 ERRORS 😭

The pause() function always returns:

• [EINTR] — The call was interrupted.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• kill(2)
• select(2)
• sigsuspend(2)

👑 HISTORY 👑

A pause() system call first appeared in the Programmer's Workbench (PWB/UNIX) and was then ported to Version 7 AT&T UNIX. It was reimplemented as a wrapper around the sigpause() and sigblock() system calls in 4.2BSD, and around the sigsuspend(2) and sigprocmask(2) system calls in 4.3BSD-Reno. History really said "reinvent me" multiple times. 💅

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xoxo, Debian 💖 — page date April 3, 2022, and the title is still PAUSE(3). Byeee 🫶