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sigaction
The sa_flags member of the sigaction structure is a
catch-all for special features. Most of the time, SA_RESTART is
a good value to use for this field.
The value of sa_flags is interpreted as a bit mask. Thus, you
should choose the flags you want to set, or those flags together,
and store the result in the sa_flags member of your
sigaction structure.
Each signal number has its own set of flags. Each call to
sigaction affects one particular signal number, and the flags
that you specify apply only to that particular signal.
In the GNU C library, establishing a handler with signal sets all
the flags to zero except for SA_RESTART, whose value depends on
the settings you have made with siginterrupt. See Interrupted Primitives, to see what this is about.
These macros are defined in the header file signal.h.
This flag is meaningful only for the
SIGCHLDsignal. When the flag is set, the system delivers the signal for a terminated child process but not for one that is stopped. By default,SIGCHLDis delivered for both terminated children and stopped children.Setting this flag for a signal other than
SIGCHLDhas no effect.
If this flag is set for a particular signal number, the system uses the signal stack when delivering that kind of signal. See Signal Stack. If a signal with this flag arrives and you have not set a signal stack, the system terminates the program with
SIGILL.
This flag controls what happens when a signal is delivered during certain primitives (such as
open,readorwrite), and the signal handler returns normally. There are two alternatives: the library function can resume, or it can return failure with error codeEINTR.The choice is controlled by the
SA_RESTARTflag for the particular kind of signal that was delivered. If the flag is set, returning from a handler resumes the library function. If the flag is clear, returning from a handler makes the function fail. See Interrupted Primitives.