Name

alarm — set an alarm clock for delivery of a signal

Synopsis

#include <unistd.h>
unsigned int alarm( unsigned int   seconds);

DESCRIPTION

alarm() arranges for a SIGALRM signal to be delivered to the process in seconds seconds.

If seconds is zero, no new alarm() is scheduled.

In any event any previously set alarm() is canceled.

RETURN VALUE

alarm() returns the number of seconds remaining until any previously scheduled alarm was due to be delivered, or zero if there was no previously scheduled alarm.

CONFORMING TO

SVr4, POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD

NOTES

alarm() and setitimer(2) share the same timer; calls to one will interfere with use of the other.

sleep(3) may be implemented using SIGALRM; mixing calls to alarm() and sleep(3) is a bad idea.

Scheduling delays can, as ever, cause the execution of the process to be delayed by an arbitrary amount of time.

SEE ALSO

gettimeofday(2), pause(2), select(2), setitimer(2), sigaction(2), signal(2), sleep(3), time(7)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 2.79 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/.


This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
                              1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson.

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Modified Wed Jul 21 19:42:57 1993 by Rik Faith <faithcs.unc.edu>
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