PWAIT(1)                FreeBSD General Commands Manual               PWAIT(1)

NAME
     pwait - wait for processes to terminate

SYNOPSIS
     pwait [-t duration] [-ov] pid ...

DESCRIPTION
     The pwait utility will wait until each of the given processes has
     terminated.

     The following option is available:

     -o      Exit when any of the given processes has terminated.

     -t duration
             If any process is still running after duration, pwait will exit.
             The duration value can be integer or decimal numbers.  Values
             without unit symbols are interpreted as seconds.

             Supported unit symbols are:
             s       seconds
             m       minutes
             h       hours

     -v      Print the exit status when each process terminates or `timeout'
             if the timer goes off earlier.

EXIT STATUS
     The pwait utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

     If the -t flag is specified and a timeout occurs, the exit status will be
     124.

     Invalid pids elicit a warning message but are otherwise ignored.

EXAMPLES
     Start two sleep(1) processes in the background.  The first one will sleep
     for 30 seconds and the second one for one hour.  Wait for any of them to
     finish but no more than 5 seconds.  Since a timeout occurs the exit
     status is 124:

           $ sleep 30 & sleep 3600 &
           [1] 1646
           [2] 1647
           $ pwait -o -t5 1646 1647
           $?
           124

     Same as above but try to obtain the exit status of the processes.  In
     this case `timeout' is shown and the exit status is 124:

           $ sleep 30 & sleep 3600 &
           [1] 1652
           [2] 1653
           $ pwait -v -t 5 1652 1653
           timeout
           $?
           124

     Start two sleep(1) processes in the background sleeping for 30 and 40
     seconds respectively.  Wait 60 seconds for any of them to finish and get
     their exit codes:

           $ sleep 30 & sleep 40 &
           [1] 1674
           [2] 1675
           $ pwait -v -t 60 1674 1675
           1674: exited with status 0.
           1675: exited with status 0.
           [1]-  Done                    sleep 30
           [2]+  Done                    sleep 40
           $ echo $?
           0

SEE ALSO
     kill(1), pkill(1), ps(1), wait(1), kqueue(2)

NOTES
     pwait is not a substitute for the wait(1) builtin as it will not clean up
     any zombies or state in the parent process.

     To avoid deadlock, pwait will ignore its own pid, if it is provided as a
     process id to wait for.

HISTORY
     A pwait command first appeared in SunOS 5.8.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6        January 21, 2021        FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6