Software → Operating Systems
Signal
A lightweight notification delivered to a process to indicate an event or request.
Motivation
Signal solves the problem of notifying a process about external or exceptional events.
Where it fits
Signal belongs to operating systems and process control.
Mental model
A signal is an asynchronous nudge to a process, such as terminate, interrupt, or reload configuration.
Common mistakes
- Treating signals like normal function calls.
- Ignoring graceful shutdown handling.
Related concepts
Signal connects to process, daemon, shell, and incident response.