NAME

_exit, _Exit - terminate the current process

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

void _exit(int status);

#include <stdlib.h>

void _Exit(int status);

DESCRIPTION

The function _exit() terminates the calling process "immediately". Any

open file descriptors belonging to the process are closed; any children

of the process are inherited by process 1, init, and the process’s par-

ent is sent a SIGCHLD signal.

The value status is returned to the parent process as the process’s

exit status, and can be collected using one of the wait() family of

calls.

The function _Exit() is equivalent to _exit().

RETURN VALUE

These functions do not return.

CONFORMING TO

SVr4, POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD. The function _Exit() was introduced by

C99.

NOTES

For a discussion on the effects of an exit, the transmission of exit

status, zombie processes, signals sent, etc., see exit(3).

The function _exit() is like exit(), but does not call any functions

registered with atexit() or on_exit(). Whether it flushes standard I/O

buffers and removes temporary files created with tmpfile(3) is imple-

mentation dependent. On the other hand, _exit() does close open file

descriptors, and this may cause an unknown delay, waiting for pending

output to finish. If the delay is undesired, it may be useful to call

functions like tcflush() before calling _exit(). Whether any pending

I/O is cancelled, and which pending I/O may be cancelled upon _exit(),

is implementation-dependent.

SEE ALSO

execve(2), exit_group(2), fork(2), kill(2), wait(2), wait4(2), wait-

pid(2), atexit(3), exit(3), on_exit(3), termios(3)