How to make parent wait for all child processes to finish?

Question

I\'m hoping someone could shed some light on how to make the parent wait for ALL child processes to finish before continuing after the fork. I have cleanup code whi

Answer 1

Use waitpid() like this:

pid_t childPid;  // the child process that the execution will soon run inside of. 
childPid = fork();

if(childPid == 0)  // fork succeeded 
{   
   // Do something   
   exit(0); 
}

else if(childPid < 0)  // fork failed 
{    
   // log the error
}

else  // Main (parent) process after fork succeeds 
{    
    int returnStatus;    
    waitpid(childPid, &returnStatus, 0);  // Parent process waits here for child to terminate.

    if (returnStatus == 0)  // Verify child process terminated without error.  
    {
       printf("The child process terminated normally.");    
    }

    if (returnStatus == 1)      
    {
       printf("The child process terminated with an error!.");    
    }
}