What is a BREAK signal?

Komodo · 2005-11-18 15:44:04

An easy question for someone more knowledgeable than me: What is a break signal? I'm customising Screen, and can't find an answer to this Q anywhere.

phrakture · 2005-11-18 15:48:13

Break signal is SIGBRK (same as SIGABRT = abort signal). It's signal #6 according to the the C headers.

If you need to send it to a process, you can do:

# kill -6 $pid

Komodo · 2005-11-18 20:05:33

What does it actually do though, phrakture? Is it just one particular way of halting whatever process you send the signal to?

phrakture · 2005-11-18 20:42:03

ion_prefect wrote:

What does it actually do though, phrakture? Is it just one particular way of halting whatever process you send the signal to?

Hmm, by default I believe it just kills the process, but developers can specifically handle SIGBRK (the only ones you can't catch are SIGKILL and SIGSTOP) - I can make an app that catches SIGBRK and spits out a smiley face if I so wanted.

So yes it *can* kill a process, but it's not always true.

Komodo · 2005-11-18 23:31:24

Okley-Dokley, I understand now

Arch Linux

#1 2005-11-18 15:44:04

What is a BREAK signal?

#2 2005-11-18 15:48:13

Re: What is a BREAK signal?

#3 2005-11-18 20:05:33

Re: What is a BREAK signal?

#4 2005-11-18 20:42:03

Re: What is a BREAK signal?

#5 2005-11-18 23:31:24

Re: What is a BREAK signal?

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