alarm function in c

The alarm function allows us to set a timer that will expire at a specified time in the future. When the timer expires, the SIGALRM signal is generated. If we ignore or don't catch this signal, its default action is to terminate the process.

#include <unistd.h>

unsigned int alarm(unsigned int seconds);

Returns: 0 or number of seconds until previously set alarm

The seconds value is the number of clock seconds in the future when the signal should be generated. Be aware that when that time occurs, the signal is generated by the kernel, but there could be additional time before the process gets control to handle the signal, because of processor scheduling delays.

Earlier UNIX System implementations warned that the signal could also be sent up to 1 second early. POSIX.1 does not allow this.

There is only one of these alarm clocks per process. If, when we call alarm, a previously registered alarm clock for the process has not yet expired, the number of seconds left for that alarm clock is returned as the value of this function. That previously registered alarm clock is replaced by the new value.

If a previously registered alarm clock for the process has not yet expired and if the seconds value is 0, the previous alarm clock is canceled. The number of seconds left for that previous alarm clock is still returned as the value of the function.

Although the default action for SIGALRM is to terminate the process, most processes that use an alarm clock catch this signal. If the process then wants to terminate, it can perform whatever cleanup is required before terminating. If we intend to catch SIGALRM, we need to be careful to install its signal handler before calling alarm. If we call alarm first and are sent SIGALRM before we can install the signal handler, our process will terminate.

The pause function suspends the calling process until a signal is caught.

See Also

POSIX system calls and Signal Tutorial