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POSIX timers

Why

Traditional Unix interval timers (setitimer(2)) suffer various limitations, including:

• Only one timer of each of three types , ITIMER_REAL (wallclock), ITIMER_VIRTUAL (user-mode CPU time), and ITIMER_PROF (user-mode + system-mode CPU time).
  
  
• Notification of timer expiration is only via signals.
  
  
• Can't change the notification signals used.
  
  
• No way to find out about timer overruns.
  
  

(C) 2006, Michael Kerrisk