need help

alarm(2)							System Calls Manual							  alarm(2)

NAME

       alarm - set a process's alarm clock

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

       instructs  the alarm clock of the calling process to send the signal to the calling process after the number of real-time seconds specified
       by sec have elapsed; see signal(5).  Specific implementations might place limitations on the maximum supported alarm  time.   The  constant
       defined	in  specifies  the implementation-specific maximum.  Whenever sec is greater that this maximum, it is silently rounded down to it.
       On all implementations, is guaranteed to be at least 31 days (in seconds).

       Alarm requests are not stacked; successive calls reset the alarm clock of the calling process.

       If sec is 0, any previously made alarm request is canceled.

       Alarms are not inherited by a child process across a but are inherited across an

       On systems that support the and system calls, the timer mechanism used by is the same as that used by Thus successive calls to and set  and
       return the state of a single timer.  In addition, sets the timer interval to zero.

RETURN VALUE

       returns the amount of time previously remaining in the alarm clock of the calling process.

WARNINGS

       In  some implementations, error bounds for alarm are -1, +0 seconds (for the posting of the alarm, not the restart of the process).  Thus a
       delay of 1 second can return immediately.  The routine can be used to create a more precise delay.

SEE ALSO

       sleep(1), exec(2), getitimer(2), pause(2), signal(5), sleep(3C).

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

																	  alarm(2)