C Language Signal handling Signal Handling with “signal()”
Example
Signal numbers can be synchronous (like SIGSEGV – segmentation fault) when they are triggered by a malfunctioning of the program itself or asynchronous (like SIGINT - interactive attention) when they are initiated from outside the program, e.g by a keypress as Cntrl-C.
The signal() function is part of the ISO C standard and can be used to assign a function to handle a specific signal
#include <stdio.h> /* printf() */
#include <stdlib.h> /* abort() */
#include <signal.h> /* signal() */
void handler_nonportable(int sig)
{
/* undefined behavior, maybe fine on specific platform */
printf("Catched: %d\n", sig);
/* abort is safe to call */
abort();
}
sig_atomic_t volatile finished = 0;
void handler(int sig)
{
switch (sig) {
/* hardware interrupts should not return */
case SIGSEGV:
case SIGFPE:
case SIGILL:
C11
/* quick_exit is safe to call */
quick_exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
C11
/* use _Exit in pre-C11 */
_Exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
default:
/* Reset the signal to the default handler,
so we will not be called again if things go
wrong on return. */
signal(sig, SIG_DFL);
/* let everybody know that we are finished */
finished = sig;
return;
}
}
int main(void)
{
/* Catch the SIGSEGV signal, raised on segmentation faults (i.e NULL ptr access */
if (signal(SIGSEGV, &handler) == SIG_ERR) {
perror("could not establish handler for SIGSEGV");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* Catch the SIGTERM signal, termination request */
if (signal(SIGTERM, &handler) == SIG_ERR) {
perror("could not establish handler for SIGTERM");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* Ignore the SIGINT signal, by setting the handler to `SIG_IGN`. */
signal(SIGINT, SIG_IGN);
/* Do something that takes some time here, and leaves
the time to terminate the program from the keyboard. */
/* Then: */
if (finished) {
fprintf(stderr, "we have been terminated by signal %d\n", (int)finished);
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* Try to force a segmentation fault, and raise a SIGSEGV */
{
char* ptr = 0;
*ptr = 0;
}
/* This should never be executed */
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
Using signal() imposes important limitations what you are allowed to do inside the signal handlers, see the remarks for further information.
POSIX recommends the usage of sigaction() instead of signal(), due to its underspecified behavior and significant implementation variations. POSIX also defines many more signals than ISO C standard, including SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2, which can be used freely by the programmer for any purpose.
