Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Summary

This chapter covered the concept of signals. Signals inform a program that an important event has occurred.

First we examined the most common signals encountered in shell programming. This was followed by a discussion of the methods for obtaining a list of the signals supported on your system. This section also covered the concept of delivering signals and the default actions associated with a signal.

The second section demonstrated two methods of signal handling. The first method is to catch signals and handle them using a signal handler. The second method is to ignore signals. Finally, we explored the use of signals to set up a timer.