Implementing infinite wait in shell scripting

Question

This may sound trivial, but I\'m pretty sure this question hasn\'t been asked, or at least I can\'t find it.

I\'m looking for a way to construct an infinite wait

Answer 1

you can use a named pipe for your read:

mkfifo /tmp/mypipe
#or mknode /tmp/mypipe p

if you later want to send different arbitrary "signals" to the pipe, the read can be use in combination with a case statement to take appropriate actions (even useful ones)

while read SIGNAL; do
    case "$SIGNAL" in
        *EXIT*)break;;
        *)echo "signal  $SIGNAL  is unsupported" >/dev/stderr;;
    esac
done < /tmp/mypipe