Signals
As with filehandles, understanding signals is fundamental to network programming. A signal is a message sent to your program by the operating system to tell it that something important has occurred. A signal can indicate an error in the program itself such as an attempt to divide by zero, an event that requires immediate attention such as an attempt by the user to interrupt the program, or a noncritical informational event such as the termination of a subprocess that your program has launched.
In addition to signals sent by the operating system, processes can signal each other. For example, when the user presses control-C (^C) on the keyboard to send an interrupt signal to the currently running program, that signal is sent not by the ...
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