gets() during signal

[Darren Reed]

Can someone tell me how signals work inside C on unix ?
I've seen an alarm() used to timeout a write() call in something like this:

		alarm(15);
		write(fd, buf, num);

which caused the write to exit if it wasnt successful after 15 seconds.

I'm looking for a way of using 'HOT' keys in a program and I'd like to
use the keyboard to interrupt the program (cease whatever its doing) and
then go on to process the new keypress.  I noticed there is a SIGIO, but
from what I've read in the odd post, that needs some ioctl() or similar
calls to setup.

any info would be greatly appreciated.