PAUSE(3POSIX)

💤 PAUSE(3POSIX) 💤

okay bestie, this one's from the POSIX Programmer's Manual — yes, the whole manual, not just one page. Sit with me for a sec:

PROLOG: this manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ — so lowkey go check the corresponding Linux manual page for the deets on Linux behavior — or honestly, the interface might not even be implemented on Linux at all. 🙈

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✨ NAME ✨

pause — suspend the thread until a signal is received

it's giving "girl just wait here until someone yells at you." 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <unistd.h>

int pause(void);

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So pause() 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.

That's it. That's the whole vibe. It just... sits there. 🧘

Now, two paths, bestie:

• If the action is to terminate the process, pause() shall not return. Like, at all. Ever. Bye. 💀
• If the action is to execute a signal-catching function, pause() shall return after the signal-catching function returns. So it comes back, but only once your handler is done doing its little thing. 🎀

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🫶 RETURN VALUE 🫶

Since pause() suspends thread execution indefinitely unless interrupted by a signal, there is no successful completion return value. Periodt.

A value of -1 shall be returned and errno set to indicate the error. That's the only ending it knows. 😭

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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.

The following sections are informative. (yes, that's the actual tea, keep reading 👑)

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

None.

...not a single one. iconic of them honestly. 🍓

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🌈 APPLICATION USAGE 🌈

okay this is the important part, bestie, don't scroll past this one. 🚨

Many common uses of pause() have timing windows. The scenario involves checking a condition related to a signal and, if the signal has not occurred, calling pause(). When the signal occurs between the check and the call to pause(), the process often blocks indefinitely. 😱

Yeah. The classic "not me checking the thing right before the thing happens" pipeline. The sigprocmask() and sigsuspend() functions can be used to avoid this type of problem. 🙏

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💜 RATIONALE 💜

None.

(the committee said no thoughts, head empty ✨)

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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, 2017, and this exact page's name is PAUSE(3POSIX). stay paused, stay iconic. mwah. 💖✨