Very Computer

Short of watching for a PID to disappear within a loop, is there a good
way of waiting for a subprocess of a subprocess? Unix wait only works on
immediate subprocesses.

Thanks, Dave.

wait <PID-of-sub-sub-process>

Of course, it has to be within the same process group as the script.

-Brian

If I execute the following series of commands, the final "wait" doesn't
wait for the PID of the "top" process.  It immediatly returns.

xterm -e top&
ps -ef|grep top

#this returns two processes, one for the xterm (the immediate sub
process)
#and one for "top"

wait top_pid  #where top_pid is the pid of the "top" process

Am I not using wait properly?

Thanks, Dave.

no David, you're quite right - the shell will only wait for a process it can
recieve signals from - there is no pipe from a "sub-sub" process to the
original shell. It is up to the parent process, in your case the xterm, to
handle signals from top, and the shell script to handle signals from xterm.
Not sure what version of unix or what shell you're using but the wait
command will prob be returning immediately with an error because it realises
top's PID is one it is unable to wait for to finish.

Not sure why you would want to do this tho - why would you want to call a
program that calls another program, but only be interested when the second
program terminates? Why not just call the second program from the shell? -
can you elaborate?

Cheers,
S.

Quote:> If I execute the following series of commands, the final "wait" doesn't
> wait for the PID of the "top" process.  It immediatly returns.

> xterm -e top&
> ps -ef|grep top

> #this returns two processes, one for the xterm (the immediate sub
> process)
> #and one for "top"

> wait top_pid  #where top_pid is the pid of the "top" process

> Am I not using wait properly?

> Thanks, Dave.