pthread_kill - send a signal to a thread
Contents
Attributes
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│ pthread_kill() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
Description
The pthread_kill() function sends the signal sig to thread, a thread in the same process as the caller.
The signal is asynchronously directed to thread.
If sig is 0, then no signal is sent, but error checking is still performed.
Errors
EINVAL An invalid signal was specified.
History
POSIX.1-2001.
Library
POSIX threads library (libpthread, -lpthread)
Name
pthread_kill - send a signal to a thread
Notes
Signal dispositions are process-wide: if a signal handler is installed, the handler will be invoked in
the thread thread, but if the disposition of the signal is "stop", "continue", or "terminate", this
action will affect the whole process.
Return Value
On success, pthread_kill() returns 0; on error, it returns an error number, and no signal is sent.
See Also
kill(2), sigaction(2), sigpending(2), pthread_self(3), pthread_sigmask(3), raise(3), pthreads(7), signal(7) Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 pthread_kill(3)
Standards
POSIX.1-2008.
Synopsis
#include<signal.h>intpthread_kill(pthread_tthread,intsig); Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): pthread_kill(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 199506L || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
Versions
The glibc implementation of pthread_kill() gives an error (EINVAL) on attempts to send either of the
real-time signals used internally by the NPTL threading implementation. See nptl(7) for details.
POSIX.1-2008 recommends that if an implementation detects the use of a thread ID after the end of its
lifetime, pthread_kill() should return the error ESRCH. The glibc implementation returns this error in
the cases where an invalid thread ID can be detected. But note also that POSIX says that an attempt to
use a thread ID whose lifetime has ended produces undefined behavior, and an attempt to use an invalid
thread ID in a call to pthread_kill() can, for example, cause a segmentation fault.
