Der Mouse

[der Mouse]

>>> Is there anything that describes "timer sockets" (PF_TIMER).  I've
>>> never seen these before and was wondering what problem they solved.
>> Briefly, they provide a file-descriptor interface to the timer
>> facilities underlying setitimer(ITIMER_REAL) and SIGALRM.
> Does this allow one to interrupt a pending select with a little more
> grace?

Depends on what you mean.  If you mean "in response to an asynchronous
external condition", no, they don't.  If you mean "in response to one
of various timeouts expiring", yes, they do, if you throw the timer
socket file descriptor(s) into the select set.

> humm.  I guess they would also allow you to have multiple timers, and
> you can tell which one fired by the fd...

Yes.  That's another reason I find them useful - you don't have to keep
your own list of timers and constantly pick out the next one to expire,
simplifying code.

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