Send Signal IPC: signal

Sends a signal RPC

Description

signal sends an operating system RPC (known as “signal”) to a specified process, identified via it’s process ID (“pid”).

The following quote from Wikipedia explains what signals are:

Signals are standardized messages sent to a running program to trigger specific behavior, such as quitting or error handling. They are a limited form of inter-process communication (IPC), typically used in Unix, Unix-like, and other POSIX-compliant operating systems.

A signal is an asynchronous notification sent to a process or to a specific thread within the same process to notify it of an event. Common uses of signals are to interrupt, suspend, terminate or kill a process.

Listing supported signals

Signals will differ from one operating system to another. You can retrieve a JSON map with supported signals by running signal without any parameters.

Usage

Send a signal:

  1. The first parameter is the process ID (int)
  2. The second parameter is the signal name (str). This will be all in UPPERCASE and prefixed “SIG”
signal pid SIGNAL

List supported signals:

signal -> <stdout>

Examples

Send a signal

function signal.SIGUSR1.trap {
    bg {
        exec <pid:MOD.SIGNAL_TRAP_PID> $MUREX_EXE -c %(
            event onSignalReceived example=SIGUSR1 {
                out "SIGUSR1 received..."
            }

            out "waiting for signal..."
            sleep 5
        )
    }
    sleep 2 # just in case `exec` hasn't started yet
    signal $MOD.SIGNAL_TRAP_PID SIGUSR1
}

test unit function signal.SIGUSR1.trap %{
    StdoutMatch: "waiting for signal...\nSIGUSR1 received...\n"
    StdoutType:  *
    ExitNum:     0
}

List supported signals

» signal
{
    "SIGABRT": "aborted",
    "SIGALRM": "alarm clock",
    "SIGBUS": "bus error",
    "SIGCHLD": "child exited",
    "SIGCONT": "continued",
    "SIGFPE": "floating point exception",
    "SIGHUP": "hangup",
    "SIGILL": "illegal instruction",
    "SIGINT": "interrupt",
    "SIGIO": "I/O possible",
    "SIGKILL": "killed",
    "SIGPIPE": "broken pipe",
    "SIGPROF": "profiling timer expired",
    "SIGPWR": "power failure",
    "SIGQUIT": "quit",
    "SIGSEGV": "segmentation fault",
    "SIGSTKFLT": "stack fault",
    "SIGSTOP": "stopped (signal)",
    "SIGSYS": "bad system call",
    "SIGTRAP": "trace/breakpoint trap",
    "SIGTSTP": "stopped",
    "SIGTTIN": "stopped (tty input)",
    "SIGTTOU": "stopped (tty output)",
    "SIGURG": "urgent I/O condition",
    "SIGUSR1": "user defined signal 1",
    "SIGUSR2": "user defined signal 2",
    "SIGVTALRM": "virtual timer expired",
    "SIGWINCH": "window changed",
    "SIGXCPU": "CPU time limit exceeded",
    "SIGXFSZ": "file size limit exceeded"
}

Flags

Detail

The interrupts listed above are a subset of what is supported on each operating system. Please consult your operating systems docs for details on each signal and what their function is.

Windows Support

While Windows doesn’t officially support signals, the following POSIX signals are emulated:

var interrupts = map[string]syscall.Signal{
    "SIGHUP":  syscall.SIGHUP,
    "SIGINT":  syscall.SIGINT,
    "SIGQUIT": syscall.SIGQUIT,
    "SIGILL":  syscall.SIGILL,
    "SIGTRAP": syscall.SIGTRAP,
    "SIGABRT": syscall.SIGABRT,
    "SIGBUS":  syscall.SIGBUS,
    "SIGFPE":  syscall.SIGFPE,
    "SIGKILL": syscall.SIGKILL,
    "SIGSEGV": syscall.SIGSEGV,
    "SIGPIPE": syscall.SIGPIPE,
    "SIGALRM": syscall.SIGALRM,
    "SIGTERM": syscall.SIGTERM,
}

Plan 9 Support

Plan 9 is not supported.

Catching incoming signals

Signals can be caught (often referred to as “trapped”) in Murex with an event: signalTrap. Read below for details.

See Also

This document was generated from builtins/events/onSignalReceived/signal_doc.yaml.

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Last built on Fri Oct 24 08:59:31 UTC 2025 against commit e59ab49e59ab49e1628d8546d2ad8ce5eb1150445f6a940.

Current version is 7.1.4143 (unknown) which has been verified against tests cases.