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[thirdparty/man-pages.git] / man3 / ualarm.3

.\" Copyright (c) 2003 Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
.\"
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
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.\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
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.\" USA.
.\"
.TH UALARM 3  2010-09-20 "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
ualarm \- schedule signal after given number of microseconds
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B "#include <unistd.h>"
.sp
.BI "useconds_t ualarm(useconds_t " usecs ", useconds_t " interval );
.fi
.sp
.in -4n
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
.BR feature_test_macros (7)):
.in
.sp
.BR ualarm ():
.ad l
.RS 4
.PD 0
.TP 4
Since glibc 2.12:
.nf
_BSD_SOURCE ||
    (_XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 ||
        _XOPEN_SOURCE\ &&\ _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED) &&
    !(_POSIX_C_SOURCE\ >=\ 200809L || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 700)
.TP 4
.fi
Before glibc 2.12:
_BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 ||
_XOPEN_SOURCE\ &&\ _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
.PD
.RE
.ad b
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR ualarm ()
function causes the signal
.B SIGALRM
to be sent to the invoking process after (not less than)
.I usecs
microseconds.
The delay may be lengthened slightly by any system activity
or by the time spent processing the call or by the
granularity of system timers.
.LP
Unless caught or ignored, the
.B SIGALRM
signal will terminate the process.
.LP
If the
.I interval
argument is nonzero, further
.B SIGALRM
signals will be sent every
.I interval
microseconds after the first.
.SH RETURN VALUE
This function returns the number of microseconds remaining for
any alarm that was previously set, or 0 if no alarm was pending.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B EINTR
Interrupted by a signal.
.TP
.B EINVAL
\fIusecs\fP or \fIinterval\fP is not smaller than 1000000.
(On systems where that is considered an error.)
.SH CONFORMING TO
4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1-2001 marks
.BR ualarm ()
as obsolete.
POSIX.1-2008 removes the specification of
.BR ualarm ().
4.3BSD, SUSv2, and POSIX do not define any errors.
.SH NOTES
The type
.I useconds_t
is an unsigned integer type capable of holding integers
in the range [0,1000000].
On the original BSD implementation, and in glibc before version 2.1,
the arguments to
.BR ualarm ()
were instead typed as
.IR "unsigned int" .
Programs will be more portable if they never mention
.I useconds_t
explicitly.
.LP
The interaction of this function with
other timer functions such as
.BR alarm (2),
.BR sleep (3),
.BR nanosleep (2),
.BR setitimer (2),
.BR timer_create (2),
.BR timer_delete (2),
.BR timer_getoverrun (2),
.BR timer_gettime (2),
.BR timer_settime (2),
.BR usleep (3)
is unspecified.
.LP
This function is obsolete.
Use
.BR setitimer (2)
or POSIX interval timers
.RB ( timer_create (2),
etc.)
instead.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR alarm (2),
.BR getitimer (2),
.BR nanosleep (2),
.BR select (2),
.BR setitimer (2),
.BR usleep (3),
.BR time (7)