SIGPAUSE(3)                         Linux Programmer's Manual                         SIGPAUSE(3)



NAME
       sigpause - atomically release blocked signals and wait for interrupt

SYNOPSIS
       #include <signal.h>

       int sigpause(int sigmask);  /* BSD (but see NOTES) */

       int sigpause(int sig);      /* System V / UNIX 95 */

DESCRIPTION
       Don't use this function.  Use sigsuspend(2) instead.

       The  function  sigpause()  is  designed to wait for some signal.  It changes the process's
       signal mask (set of blocked signals), and then waits for a signal to arrive.  Upon arrival
       of a signal, the original signal mask is restored.

RETURN VALUE
       If  sigpause()  returns,  it  was  interrupted by a signal and the return value is -1 with
       errno set to EINTR.

ATTRIBUTES
   Multithreading (see pthreads(7))
       The sigpause() function is thread-safe.

CONFORMING TO
       The System V version of sigpause() is standardized in POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES
   History
       The classical BSD version of this function appeared in 4.2BSD.  It sets the process's sig‐
       nal mask to sigmask.  UNIX 95 standardized the incompatible System V version of this func‐
       tion, which removes only the specified signal sig from the  process's  signal  mask.   The
       unfortunate situation with two incompatible functions with the same name was solved by the
       sigsuspend(2) function, that takes a sigset_t * argument (instead of an int).

   Linux notes
       On Linux, this routine is a system call only on the Sparc (sparc64) architecture.

       Glibc uses the BSD version if the _BSD_SOURCE feature test macro is defined  and  none  of
       _POSIX_SOURCE,  _POSIX_C_SOURCE,  _XOPEN_SOURCE,  _GNU_SOURCE, or _SVID_SOURCE is defined.
       Otherwise, the System V version is used (and _XOPEN_SOURCE must be defined to  obtain  the
       declaration).   Since  glibc  2.19,  only  the  System V version is exposed by <signal.h>;
       applications that formerly used the BSD sigpause() should be amended to use sigsuspend(2).

SEE ALSO
       kill(2),  sigaction(2),  sigprocmask(2),  sigsuspend(2),  sigblock(3),   sigvec(3),   fea‐
       ture_test_macros(7)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
       found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux                                       2014-08-19                                SIGPAUSE(3)