pause function in c

The pause function suspends the calling process until a signal is caught.

#include <unistd.h>

int pause(void);

Returns: 1 with errno set to EINTR

The only time pause returns is if a signal handler is executed and that handler returns. In that case, pause returns 1 with errno set to EINTR.

Example

Using alarm and pause, we can put a process to sleep for a specified amount of time.

This function looks like the sleep function, but this simple implementation has three problems.

1. If the caller already has an alarm set, that alarm is erased by the first call to alarm. We can correct this by looking at the return value from the first call to alarm. If the number of seconds until some previously set alarm is less than the argument, then we should wait only until the previously set alarm expires. If the previously set alarm will go off after ours, then before returning we should reset this alarm to occur at its designated time in the future. 
2. We have modified the disposition for SIGALRM. If we're writing a function for others to call, we should save the disposition when we're called and restore it when we're done. We can correct this by saving the return value from signal and resetting the disposition before we return. 
3. There is a race condition between the first call to alarm and the call to pause. On a busy system, it's possible for the alarm to go off and the signal handler to be called before we call pause. If that happens, the caller is suspended forever in the call to pause (assuming that some other signal isn't caught).

Earlier implementations of sleep looked like our program, with problems 1 and 2 corrected as described. There are two ways to correct problem 3. The first uses setjmp, which we show in the next example.

See also

alarm function in c

POSIX system calls and Signal Tutorial