SIGINT (POSIX)
Template:Infobox Computing signal
On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGINT is the signal sent to a process when a user wishes to interrupt it. In source code, SIGINT is a symbolic constant defined in the header file signal.h
. Symbolic signal names are used because a signal's numeric value can vary across platforms; on the vast majority of systems, it is signal #2
Etymology
SIG is a common prefix for signal names. INT is an abbreviated form of interrupt or interactive.
Usage
SIGINT is sent when the user on the process' terminal presses the interrupt the running process key — typically Control-C, but on some systems, the "delete" character or "break" key (the latter is not an ASCII character, but an out-of-band signal such as an electrical condition on a serial port).