Signals
Signals are a Unix invention for asynchronous signaling, and were integrated into the C standard (<signal.h>). When a process receives a signal (send by hardware, or another process using raise()
), a signal handler is called. A signal handler is a C function that handles the signal; which function to call on which signal is defined by passing its function pointer to the signal()
function. (If no signal handler is defined for a given signal, a raise()
of that signal aborts the program.)
Handling
Signal handling is tricky, since it breaks the single-control-flow structure of a C program. Not only that but in C, almost nothing is atomic, not even something like i++ (unless i is of type sig_atomic_t)---note that C11 adds more atomicity support. Make sure you read the manuals.