signal sets

We need a data type to represent multiple signalsa signal set. We'll use this with such functions as sigprocmask (in the next section) to tell the kernel not to allow any of the signals in the set to occur. As we mentioned earlier, the number of different signals can exceed the number of bits in an integer, so in general, we can't use an integer to represent the set with one bit per signal. POSIX.1 defines the data type sigset_t to contain a signal set and the following five functions to manipulate signal sets.

#include <signal.h>

int sigemptyset(sigset_t *set);

int sigfillset(sigset_t *set);

int sigaddset(sigset_t *set, int signo);

int sigdelset(sigset_t *set, int signo);

/*

 * All four return: 0 if OK, 1 on error

 */

int sigismember(const sigset_t *set, int signo); 

/*

 * Returns: 1 if true, 0 if false, 1 on error

 */

 

The function sigemptyset initializes the signal set pointed to by set so that all signals are excluded. The function sigfillset initializes the signal set so that all signals are included. All applications have to call either sigemptyset or sigfillset once for each signal set, before using the signal set, because we cannot assume that the C initialization for external and static variables (0) corresponds to the implementation of signal sets on a given system.

Once we have initialized a signal set, we can add and delete specific signals in the set. The function sigaddset adds a single signal to an existing set, and sigdelset removes a single signal from a set. In all the functions that take a signal set as an argument, we always pass the address of the signal set as the argument.

See Also

POSIX Signal Tutorial and Sample Codes