problems with alarm(0)

[jm at wlbr.UUCP]

x
johan at philmds complains that bracketing a read/write with alarm()s
may fail because the SIGALRM may come in even after an alarm(0) call.

My customary way of preventing this is to ignore the SIGALRM before
calling alarm(0).

	onalarm()
	{
		signal(SIGALRM, onalarm);
		alarm(2);
	A:
	}

	{
		...
		signal(SIGALRM, onalarm);
		alarm(2);
	B:
		i = read(fd, buf, sizeof(buf));
ADDED LINE>>>>	signal(SIGALRM, SIG_IGN);
		alarm(0);
		if (i == -1 && errno == EINTR) {
			...  /* handle timeout */
		} else {
			...  /* handle data read */
		}
		...
	}

In this manner, even if the SIGALRM is given to the process, it will do
no harm.

		Jim Macropol
		{scgvaxd,ihnp4,trwrb,vortex}!wlbr!jm