kill

Sends a signal to the process specified by a process ID.

Format

#include  <signal.h>

int kill  (int pid, int sig);

Arguments

pid

The process ID.

sig

The signal code.

Description

OpenVMS VAX and Alpha implement different rules about what process you are allowed to send signals to. A program always has privileges to send a signal to a child started with vfork/exec. For other processes, the results are determined by the OpenVMS security model for your system.

Unless you have system privileges, the sending and receiving processes must have the same user identification code (UIC).

On OpenVMS systems before Version 7.0, kill treats a signal value of 0 as if SIGKILL were specified.

For OpenVMS Version 7.0 and higher systems, if you include <stdlib.h> and compile with the _POSIX_EXIT feature-test macro set, then:

• If the signal value is 0, kill validates the process ID but does not send any signals.

• If the process ID is not valid, kill returns -1 and sets errno to ESRCH.

Return Values

0	Indicates that kill was successfully queued.
-1	Indicates errors. The receiving process may have a different UIC and you are not a system user, or the receiving process does not exist.

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