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.\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
.\"                               1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson.
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.\" Modified Wed Jul 21 19:42:57 1993 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
.\" Modified Sun Jul 21 21:25:26 1996 by Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
.\" Modified Wed Nov  6 03:46:05 1996 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
.\"
.TH ALARM 2 2008-06-12 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
alarm \- set an alarm clock for delivery of a signal
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <unistd.h>
.sp
.BI "unsigned int alarm(unsigned int " seconds );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR alarm ()
arranges for a
.B SIGALRM
signal to be delivered to the calling process in
.I seconds
seconds.

If
.I seconds
is zero, no new
.BR alarm ()
is scheduled.

In any event any previously set
.BR alarm ()
is canceled.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
.BR alarm ()
returns the number of seconds remaining until any previously scheduled
alarm was due to be delivered, or zero if there was no previously
scheduled alarm.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
SVr4, POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD.
.SH NOTES
.BR alarm ()
and
.BR setitimer (2)
share the same timer; calls to one will interfere with use of the
other.
.PP
.BR sleep (3)
may be implemented using
.BR SIGALRM ;
mixing calls to
.BR alarm ()
and
.BR sleep (3)
is a bad idea.

Scheduling delays can, as ever, cause the execution of the process to
be delayed by an arbitrary amount of time.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR gettimeofday (2),
.BR pause (2),
.BR select (2),
.BR setitimer (2),
.BR sigaction (2),
.BR signal (2),
.BR sleep (3),
.BR time (7)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.22 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
and information about reporting bugs,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
