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The sigalarm program

Usage

where timeout is a number of seconds to wait before delivering a signal and prog is one or more arguments specifying a program to run.

Description

The -s option takes a signal as an argument and accepts a number or one of the (case insensitive) strings ALRM, CHLD, CONT, HUP, INT, PIPE, or TERM. The last -s or -a option takes precedence.

The sigalarm sets an alarm for timeout seconds. Options are:

• -a sig: Set alarm and execute prog.
• -s sig: Fork and exec prog. Deliver sig to prog if the alarm goes off.

The following invokations are equivalent:

Under -a, sigalarm sets an alarm for timeout seconds and executes prog. The child process inherits the alarm. Note that implementations of sleep use the alarm may interact poorly with sigalarm -a. With -s, sigalarm forks and execs prog, and delivers it a sig signal if timeout seconds elapse before the child exits. In either case, sigalarm exits with the same exit code as prog.