NAME

Thread::Signal - Start a thread which runs signal handlers reliably


SYNOPSIS

    use Thread::Signal;

    $SIG{HUP} = \&some_handler;


DESCRIPTION

The Thread::Signal module starts up a special signal handler thread. All signals to the process are delivered to it and it runs the associated $SIG{FOO} handlers for them. Without this module, signals arriving at inopportune moments (such as when perl's internals are in the middle of updating critical structures) cause the perl code of the handler to be run unsafely which can cause memory corruption or worse.


BUGS

This module changes the semantics of signal handling slightly in that the signal handler is run separately from the main thread (and in parallel with it). This means that tricks such as calling die from a signal handler behave differently (and, in particular, can't be used to exit directly from a system call).


DISCLAIMER

We are painfully aware that these documents may contain incorrect links and misformatted HTML. Such bugs lie in the automatic translation process that automatically created the hundreds and hundreds of separate documents that you find here. Please do not report link or formatting bugs, because we cannot fix per-document problems. The only bug reports that will help us are those that supply working patches to the installhtml or pod2html programs, or to the Pod::HTML module itself, for which I and the entire Perl community will shower you with thanks and praises.

If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.

--Tom Christiansen, Perl Documentation Compiler and Editor


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