SIGPAUSE

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2014-08-19
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

sigpause - atomically release blocked signals and wait for interrupt  

SYNOPSIS

#include <signal.h>

int sigpause(int sigmask);  /* BSD (but see NOTES) */

int sigpause(int sig);      /* System V / UNIX 95 */
 

DESCRIPTION

Don't use this function. Use sigsuspend(2) instead.

The function sigpause() is designed to wait for some signal. It changes the process's signal mask (set of blocked signals), and then waits for a signal to arrive. Upon arrival of a signal, the original signal mask is restored.  

RETURN VALUE

If sigpause() returns, it was interrupted by a signal and the return value is -1 with errno set to EINTR.  

ATTRIBUTES

 

Multithreading (see pthreads(7))

The sigpause() function is thread-safe.  

CONFORMING TO

The System V version of sigpause() is standardized in POSIX.1-2001.  

NOTES

 

History

The classical BSD version of this function appeared in 4.2BSD. It sets the process's signal mask to sigmask. UNIX 95 standardized the incompatible System V version of this function, which removes only the specified signal sig from the process's signal mask. The unfortunate situation with two incompatible functions with the same name was solved by the sigsuspend(2) function, that takes a sigset_t * argument (instead of an int).  

Linux notes

On Linux, this routine is a system call only on the Sparc (sparc64) architecture.

Glibc uses the BSD version if the _BSD_SOURCE feature test macro is defined and none of _POSIX_SOURCE, _POSIX_C_SOURCE, _XOPEN_SOURCE, _GNU_SOURCE, or _SVID_SOURCE is defined. Otherwise, the System V version is used (and _XOPEN_SOURCE must be defined to obtain the declaration). Since glibc 2.19, only the System V version is exposed by <signal.h>; applications that formerly used the BSD sigpause() should be amended to use sigsuspend(2).  

SEE ALSO

kill(2), sigaction(2), sigprocmask(2), sigsuspend(2), sigblock(3), sigvec(3), feature_test_macros(7)


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE
ATTRIBUTES
Multithreading (see pthreads(7))
CONFORMING TO
NOTES
History
Linux notes
SEE ALSO

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Time: 02:55:00 GMT, September 18, 2014