Hi, >I expect tail -f /dev/null to be close enough in behavior to >pause(3), even though it does something else internally. yes, indeed even if it might be not the best in efficiency [1] somebody suggested "sleep inf" or "sleep infinity". [1] http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/42901/how-to-do-nothing-forever-in-an-elegant-way cheers, G.