system("PAUSE") for linux?

W

Walter Roberson

:Is there something like system("PAUSE") for linux?

As far as this newsgroup is concerned, the exact replacement is

system("PAUSE");

That's because as far as this newsgroup is concerned, PAUSE has
an unidentified system-dependant function. If the functionality of
PAUSE were to be described, then a Unix or Linux newsgroup would be
able to tell you what the nearest Linux equivilent would be.


On some systems, PAUSE means "suspend CPU activity on the system until
there is an interrupt". On others, it means "suspend the active process
for 1 second". On others, it means "flush any pending output and
wait until a key is pressed and then continue (without waiting for
a newline.) On others, the newline is required. On others, it means
"print the error message associated with not finding a named program
or command". On others it means "look for an executable program
named PAUSE in the current directory and execute it, with whatever
consequences that has." Others yet it would mean "look for an
executable program named PAUSE in the currently defined list of
program locations, and execute it, with whatever condequences that has."

Possibly the most common meaning, though, is "Play a recording
of your voice telling the dog to get his paws off of the furniture."
If that's the one you were looking for, see section 93.11 of the
Linux FAQ, which discusses the various ways of getting high-fidelity
playback of His Master's Voice on various kinds of sound cards
and Midi Synthesizers.
 
K

Keith Thompson

Paminu said:
Is there something like system("PAUSE") for linux?

We don't know. Try a Linux or Unix group. comp.unix.programmer is a
likely place to ask about this -- but first explain what
system("PAUSE") means.

But first, try reading the documentation that comes with the system.
 
S

Simon Biber

Paminu said:
Is there something like system("PAUSE") for linux?

This is off-topic for comp.lang.c, you should have posted to
comp.unix.programmer. However, I have written a clone of the MS-DOS
pause command for Linux, and I can give you a link to it here.

http://members.optushome.com.au/sbiber/pause-1.0.tar.gz

It should work on other Unix-like systems too. Extract it, change to the
directory pause-1.0, and type
make
to build, and you can type
sudo make install
to copy the executable to /usr/local/bin
 
A

Anonymous 7843

Is there something like system("PAUSE") for linux?

Linux programs generally don't do that. It makes it hard
to use your program in a pipe context, plus one usually
runs command line programs...from the command line...so by
default there's no danger of the window just disappearing
as soon as the program is done.

It's usually left to the user to pipe your program's output
through "less" or "more" if they want to pause between
screenfuls of data.
 
P

Paminu

Simon said:
This is off-topic for comp.lang.c, you should have posted to
comp.unix.programmer. However, I have written a clone of the MS-DOS
pause command for Linux, and I can give you a link to it here.

http://members.optushome.com.au/sbiber/pause-1.0.tar.gz

It should work on other Unix-like systems too. Extract it, change to the
directory pause-1.0, and type
make
to build, and you can type
sudo make install
to copy the executable to /usr/local/bin


Ok done that but how do I use it in my source.c file??
 
K

Kenneth Brody

Paminu said:
Is there something like system("PAUSE") for linux?

Assuming that system("PAUSE") causes a Windows box to display "press any
key to continue", and then waits for any keystroke, the answer is "no".
(Check the FAQ. I'm sure someone can give the exact section number.)

However, if you are willing to go for "press enter to continue" instead,
then you can simply printf() that message, and use a while loop waiting
for getchar() to return '\n'.

--
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------------+
| Kenneth J. Brody | www.hvcomputer.com | |
| kenbrody/at\spamcop.net | www.fptech.com | #include <std_disclaimer.h> |
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------------+
Don't e-mail me at: <mailto:[email protected]>
 
S

Simon Biber

Paminu said:
Ok done that but how do I use it in my source.c file??

If it's installed to a location that is in your PATH, then you need only
write system("pause"); in your source code. Note that Linux is
case-sensitive. It won't work if you use uppercase "PAUSE" in your
program but the program is called lowercase "pause".

You might want to create a directory under your home directory to store
your own commands, such as ~/bin
mkdir ~/bin
cp pause ~/bin

Then, add a line to your ~/.profile file to make sure that this
directory is always added to your path:
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

Log out and back in, and check that the directory was added to your
path. You can check your path list by typing
echo $PATH
 
R

Roger Leigh

Paminu said:
Is there something like system("PAUSE") for linux?

You don't want to do that.

While it's certainly possible, you
1) Don't want to use system(3) just to pause the program: create a
pause() function. "man 3 termios" to disable line buffering, or
check out [n]curses.
2) Need to ask yourself why you need this. If you are running on a
TTY or PTY, what is the benefit?

The only use I've seen for this in Windows programs is to work around
the horrible broken terminal emulator that comes with Windows. You
won't have that problem on Linux: the emulator is not going to close
when your program terminates, so this is pointless.


Regards,
Roger
 
K

Kenny McCormack

Roger Leigh said:
The only use I've seen for this in Windows programs is to work around
the horrible broken terminal emulator that comes with Windows.

Actually, I use the "pause" functionality (built-in in DOS/Windows; written
by me [and others] for Unix) frequently on both platforms for script
debugging.

And note, BTW, that some scripts are never (fully) debugged because the
data sources are unreliable. So, the pauses must be left in in perpetuity.
You won't have that problem on Linux: the emulator is not going to close
when your program terminates, so this is pointless.

(It is somewhat unclear to what you are really referring here, since Windows
doesn't really have an "emulator" - in the sense that Unix does. But,
leaving that aside for the moment...)

Actually, this *is* a problem under Unix, as frequent postings in the shell
group(s) attest. That is, people looking for something along the lines of:

xterm -e sh -c '...;echo "Press enter...";read x'
 
B

Ben Pfaff

Roger Leigh said:
While it's certainly possible, you
1) Don't want to use system(3) just to pause the program: create a
pause() function.

Why is it a bad idea to use system() to pause a program? Waiting
for a keystroke from a user is hardly performance-intensive.

By the way, please don't use Unix manpage notation in
comp.lang.c. It confuses people who are not familiar with Unix,
because it looks like a function invocation.
 
R

Roger Leigh

Ben Pfaff said:
Why is it a bad idea to use system() to pause a program? Waiting
for a keystroke from a user is hardly performance-intensive.

No, but it is extremely wasteful of system resources when you compare
the cost of starting a whole new program to wait for a keypress
compared with doing it yourself in just a few lines of code.
 

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