SIGINT (POSIX)
A signal is a limited form of inter-process communication used in Unix, Unix-like, and other POSIX-compliant operating systems.
Signals have been around since the 1970s Bell Labs Unix and have been more recently specified in the POSIX standard.
A Signal is a asynchronous notification sent to a process or to a specific thread within the same process in order to notify it of an event that occurred.
- When a signal is sent, the operating system interrupts the target process's normal flow of execution to deliver the signal.
- Execution can be interrupted during any non-atomic instruction.
- If the process has previously registered a signal handler, that routine is executed.
- Otherwise the default signal handler is executed.
Embedded programs may find signals useful for interprocess communications, as the computational and memory footprint for signals is small.
Read more about SIGINT (POSIX): Sending Signals, Handling Signals, Relationship With Hardware Exceptions, POSIX Signals, Miscellaneous Signals, See Also