alarms and longjmp

[Peter da Silva]

> What is the proper behavior of an alarm call.
> 
> Below is an extract of a public domain program. 
> To get it to work on a VAX (4.2) I made some changes.
> What is the proper way to handle the timeout condition ?
> Is the original way "legal" (I know it works on most machines) ?

The original way worked on everything except a 4.2 system. UCB wanted
a cleaner way to deal with signals that didn't trash system calls, so
they changed the way they worked. The fact that they didn't leave the
old method in is my only major gripe with 4.2. They should have at
least implemented a "killsys()" call when you wanted to abort the
system call you happened to be in when the alarm occurred.
-- 
	Peter da Silva (the mad Australian)
		UUCP: ...!shell!neuro1!{hyd-ptd,baylor,datafac}!peter
		MCI: PDASILVA; CIS: 70216,1076