On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 8:33 PM, Rahul Gandhi <rahul.rahulgags@gmail.com> wrote:

As per my understanding, when the signal denoted by signum occurs/is raised, the action is taken which can be either SIG_DFL, SIG_IGN or a function/handler. What i don't understand is, when we write for example signal(SIGPROF, handler); isn't this supposed to be asynchronous? however the code is executed sequentially. So, when this function is encountered, it is executed and when a signal is raised, how does it know what to do?

signal() in your example lets the operating system know that you want the function 'handler' to be executed if SIGPROF is raised and delivered to your process; it doesn't call the handler when that line of code is executed.

~Yousef