STRSIGNAL(3POSIX)

💖 STRSIGNAL(3POSIX) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the POSIX Programmer's Manual ✨ this one's strsignal from section 3POSIX, and it's honestly iconic.

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🌸 PROLOG 🌸

so like, this manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. the Linux implementation of this interface may differ — so if you're on Linux, go check the corresponding Linux manual page for the actual tea on Linux behavior ☕ — or the interface might just straight up not be implemented on Linux at all. iykyk. 💀

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✨ NAME ✨

strsignal — get name of signal 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <string.h>

char *strsignal(int signum);

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so the strsignal() function shall map the signal number in signum to an implementation-defined string and shall return a pointer to it. and the way it uses the same set of messages as the psignal() function? yeah, matching behavior, obsessed. 🫶

🚨 bestie listen — the application shall not modify the string returned. periodt.

the returned pointer might be invalidated, or the string content might get overwritten, by a subsequent call to strsignal() or setlocale(). and the returned pointer might also be invalidated if the calling thread gets terminated. 😭 so don't hold onto it, fr fr.

the contents of the message strings returned by strsignal() should be determined by the setting of the LC_MESSAGES category in the current locale. 🌈

the implementation shall behave as if no function defined in this standard calls strsignal(). no cap.

and since no return value is reserved to indicate an error, an application wishing to check for error situations should:

1. set errno to 0
2. then call strsignal()
3. then check errno

the strsignal() function need not be thread-safe. 💀 (yes, that's the vibe, sorry)

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👑 RETURN VALUE 👑

upon successful completion, strsignal() shall return a pointer to a string. otherwise, if signum is not a valid signal number, the return value is unspecified. 🙈

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💜 ERRORS 💜

no errors are defined. 💅

the following sections are informative. (aka: the fun bonus content, not the binding stuff 🍓)

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⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

none. 🧚

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🌸 APPLICATION USAGE 🌸

none. 🎀

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🔥 RATIONALE 🔥

okay so here's the lore: if signum is not a valid signal number, some implementations return NULL, while for others the strsignal() function returns a pointer to a string containing an unspecified message denoting an unknown signal. POSIX.1‐2008 leaves this return value unspecified. so yeah, it's giving chaos, and that's on purpose. 😭

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🦋 FUTURE DIRECTIONS 🦋

none. ✨

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• psiginfo()
• setlocale()

the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, <string.h> 📖

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💖 COPYRIGHT 💖

portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. 🫶

in the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. the original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. to report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html . 🐛

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and that's the whole thing bestie — brought to you by IEEE/The Open Group, 2017, STRSIGNAL(3POSIX), and this entire page. slay, go read your signals. 💅✨👑