timer_delete(2)

💖 timer_delete(2) — it's giving "bye bestie" 💖

okay so real talk: this is a page from the System Calls Manual, and it's all about yeeting a POSIX per-process timer out of existence. no cap. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

timer_delete — delete a POSIX per-process timer

like, the timer's gone. it doesn't get a goodbye party. 🦋

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📚 LIBRARY 📚

Real-time library — that's librt, and yes bestie you gotta link it with -lrt. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <time.h>

int timer_delete(timer_t timerid);

🧚 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc 🧚

(and if you wanna peek at the whole feature_test_macros(7) lore, go off)

• timer_delete():
  • _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 199309L

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💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

okay so timer_delete() deletes the timer whose ID is given in timerid. that's the whole job. that's the vibe.

and here's the part where it gets considerate 🫶 — if the timer was armed at the time of this call, it gets disarmed before being deleted. so it's not out here haunting you after it's gone, bestie.

⚠️ okay so this is the important bit: the treatment of any pending signal generated by the deleted timer is unspecified. not "it does X", not "it does Y" — unspecified. so don't build your whole personality on a specific outcome there, fr fr. 💀

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🔥 RETURN VALUE 🔥

• On success, timer_delete() returns 0. slay. ✨
• On failure, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error. 😭

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💅 ERRORS 💅

• EINVAL — timerid is not a valid timer ID. like, that's not a timer, that's a random number you made up. 🙈

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👑 STANDARDS 👑

POSIX.1-2024. periodt. 💜

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🌈 HISTORY 🌈

• Linux 2.6.
• POSIX.1-2001.

so it's been iconic for a minute. 🎀

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🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

• clock_gettime(2)
• timer_create(2)
• timer_getoverrun(2)
• timer_settime(2)
• time(7)

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and that's the whole page!! Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2025-10-29, and honestly? she ate. go delete a timer, bestie, you got this 💖✨🦋💅