On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 06:51:54PM +0100, Mischa Baars wrote: > SECONDS=5; for (( i=0;i<32;i++ )); do { exit ${i}; } & pid[${i}]=${!}; done; > sleep ${SECONDS}; for (( i=0;i<32;i++ )); do wait -n ${pid[${i}]}; e=${?}; > echo "$(printf %3u ${i}) pid ${pid[${i}]} exit ${e}"; done; > /bin/bash: line 1: wait: 1747087: no such job > 0 pid 1747087 exit 127 > /bin/bash: line 1: wait: 1747088: no such job > 1 pid 1747088 exit 127
Without analyzing this in depth, one thing struck me immediately: you're using the reserved variable SECONDS, which has special semantics in bash. ${SECONDS} is going to expand to an ever-increasing number, beginning with 5 (since that's the value you assigned), and going up by 1 per second that the script runs. I'm assuming that was not your intention. In general, any variable whose name is all capital letters *may* have special meaning to the shell and should not be used for general storage purposes in scripts.