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.\" Copyright (c) 2003 Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
.\"
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
.\" the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" The GNU General Public License's references to "object code"
.\" and "executables" are to be interpreted as the output of any
.\" document formatting or typesetting system, including
.\" intermediate and printed output.
.\"
.\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
.\" License along with this manual; if not, write to the Free
.\" Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111,
.\" USA.
.\"
.TH UALARM 3 2003-07-24 "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
ualarm \- schedule signal after given number of microseconds
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B "#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500 /* Or: #define _BSD_SOURCE */"
.B "#include <unistd.h>"
.sp
.BI "useconds_t ualarm(useconds_t " usecs ", useconds_t " interval );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The \fBualarm\fP() function causes the signal SIGALRM to be sent
to the invoking process after (not less than)
.I usecs
microseconds.
The delay may be lengthened slightly by any system activity
or by the time spent processing the call or by the
granularity of system timers.
.LP
Unless caught or ignored, the SIGALRM signal will terminate the process.
.LP
If the
.I interval
argument is non-zero, further SIGALRM signals will be sent every
.I interval
microseconds after the first.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
This function returns the number of microseconds remaining for
any alarm that was previously set, or 0 if no alarm was pending.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
EINTR
Interrupted by a signal.
.TP
EINVAL
\fIusecs\fP or \fIinterval\fP is not smaller than 1000000.
(On systems where that is considered an error.)
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1-2001 marks
.BR ualarm ()
as obsolete.
4.3BSD, SUSv2, and POSIX do not define any errors.
.SH NOTES
The type
.I useconds_t
is an unsigned integer type capable of holding integers
in the range [0,1000000].
On the original BSD implementation, and in glibc before version 2.1,
the arguments to
.BR ualarm ()
were instead typed as
.IR "unsigned int" .
Programs will be more portable if they never mention
.I useconds_t
explicitly.
.LP
The interaction of this function with
other timer functions such as
.BR alarm (),
.BR sleep (),
.BR nanosleep (),
.BR setitimer (),
.BR timer_create (),
.BR timer_delete (),
.BR timer_getoverrun (),
.BR timer_gettime (),
.BR timer_settime (),
.BR usleep ()
is unspecified.
.LP
This function is obsolete.
Use
.BR setitimer (2)
or POSIX interval timers
.RB ( timer_create (),
etc.)
instead.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR alarm (2),
.BR getitimer (2),
.BR nanosleep (2),
.BR select (2),
.BR setitimer (2),
.BR usleep (3),
.BR feature_test_macros (7),
.BR time (7)
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