PAUSE(3P)

✨ PAUSE(3P) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the POSIX Programmer's Manual 💖 this one's short but she's important, so grab your strawberry milk 🍓

PROLOG time, real quick: this manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (so like, go consult the corresponding Linux manual page for the deets on Linux behavior), or the interface may not even be implemented on Linux at all. 🙈 no cap.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pause — suspend the thread until a signal is received

like. she just waits. iconic behavior honestly 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <unistd.h>

int pause(void);

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

The pause() 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. 🛑

If the action is to terminate the process, pause() shall not return. girl is GONE. not coming back. 💀

If the action is to execute a signal-catching function, pause() shall return after the signal-catching function returns. so like, she waits, the handler does her lil thing, and then we're back. 🫶

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🎀 RETURN VALUE 🎀

okay so here's the thing — since pause() suspends thread execution indefinitely unless interrupted by a signal, there is no successful completion return value. like, there's no "yay we did it" return, bestie. 😭

A value of -1 shall be returned and errno set to indicate the error.

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🔥 ERRORS 🔥

The pause() function shall fail if:

• EINTR — a signal is caught by the calling process and control is returned from the signal-catching function. that's the one and only error she has, and honestly? she owns it.

The following sections are informative. (translation: the juicy bits are done, this is the bonus content ✨)

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

None. 😌

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💜 APPLICATION USAGE 💜

okay so this is the part where I gotta be real with you: many common uses of pause() have timing windows. 🚨

The scenario is like: you check a condition related to a signal, and if the signal has not occurred, you call pause(). But when the signal occurs between the check and the call to pause(), the process often blocks indefinitely. it's giving "we missed each other in the group chat" energy and now nobody's talking. 💀

The sigprocmask() and sigsuspend() functions can be used to avoid this type of problem. slay, use those. 🫶

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🧚 RATIONALE 🧚

None. ✨

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⭐ FUTURE DIRECTIONS ⭐

None. 💅

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• sigsuspend()
• The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, <unistd.h>

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🌸 COPYRIGHT 🌸

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.

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.opengroup.org/unix/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 .

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and that's the whole page bestie!! 🎀 brought to you by IEEE/The Open Group, dated 2017, and this lil cutie is PAUSE(3P) 💖 she waits, she blocks, she eats. periodt. 🌈✨