Name

sigpause — atomically release blocked signals and wait for interrupt

Synopsis

#include <signal.h>

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

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.

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.

Libc4 and libc5 know only about the BSD version.

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.

SEE ALSO

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

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.52 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man−pages/.


  Copyright (C) 2004 Andries Brouwer (aebcwi.nl)

%%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.

Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
professionally.

Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
%%%LICENSE_END