How to get return value from CHILD PROCESS?

Question

Program calculates sum of numbers from 1 to N.. Child process calculates sum of EVEN numbers. Parent process calculates sum of odd numbers. I want to get the return value of child process in parent process. How do i do that

#include<stdio.h>
#include<errno.h>
#include<unistd.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<fcntl.h>

int main()
{
    int N;
    int id;
    int fd_result;;

    printf("Enter N till which you want the sum: \n");
    scanf("%d",&N);
    if ((fd_result=creat("result", 600))== -1)
    {
        perror("Error creating file");
        exit(1);
    }
    if ((fd_result=open("result",O_TRUNC | O_RDWR)) == -1)
    {
        perror("Error Opening file");
        exit(1);
    }
    if ((id=fork())<0)
    {
        perror("Error occurred forking....!");
        exit(errno);
    }
    if (id == 0)
    {
        int i;
        int sum=0;
        for (i=0;i<=N;i=i+2)
            sum+=i;
        printf("Child sum: %d",sum);
        if (write(fd_result,&sum,sizeof(int))==-1) perror("Error writing to file");
        _exit(0);
    }


    if (id > 0)
    {
        int i;
        int sum=0;
        int sum_odd;
        for (i=1;i<=N;i=i+2)
            sum+=i;
        lseek(fd_result,0,SEEK_SET);
        read(fd_result,&sum_odd,sizeof(int));
        printf("\nThe sum is: %d",sum+(int)sum_odd);
    }

    close(fd_result);
    return 0;
}

Pls tell me how do I get the return value of child process?

Answer 1

TLDR

int wstatus;
waitpid(<pid>, &wstatus, 0); // Store proc info into wstatus
int return_value = WEXITSTATUS(wstatus); // Extract return value from wstatus

---

Reference

The manpage for waitpid shows its type signature is:

pid_t waitpid(pid_t pid, int *stat_loc, int options);

It also states that we can store process information with the stat_loc argument:

if the value of the argument stat_loc is not a null pointer, information shall be stored in the location pointed to by stat_loc

the stat_val argument is the integer value pointed to by stat_loc.

We then use WEXITSTATUS(wstatus) to extract our return value from the process.

WEXITSTATUS(stat_val): If the value of WIFEXITED(stat_val) is non-zero, this macro evaluates to the low-order 8 bits of the status argument that the child process passed to _exit() or exit(), or the value the child process returned from main().

Answer 2

What you are looking for is wait() or waitpid().