C process control

C process control refers to a group of functions in the standard library of the C programming language implementing basic process control operations.^[1]^[2] The process control operations include actions such as termination of the program with various levels of cleanup, running an external command interpreter or accessing the list of the environment operations.

Overview of functions

The process control functions are defined in the stdlib.h header (cstdlib header in C++).

	Function	Description
Terminating a program	`abort`	causes abnormal program termination (without cleaning up)
	`exit`	causes normal program termination with cleaning up
	`_Exit`	causes normal program termination without cleaning up (C99)
	`atexit`	registers a function to be called on exit() invocation
	`quick_exit`	causes normal program termination without cleaning up, but with IO buffers flushed (C11)
	`at_quick_exit`	registers a function to be called on quick_exit() invocation
Communicating with the environment	`getenv`	accesses the list of the environment variables
Communicating with the environment	`system`	calls the host environment's command processor

References

^ Crawford, Tony; Peter Prinz (December 2005). C in a Nutshell. §16.11 – Process Control: O'Reilly. p. 618. ISBN 0-596-00697-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^ ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification (PDF). p. 315, § 7.20.4 "Communication with the environment". Retrieved 25 November 2011.

External links

[1] Crawford, Tony; Peter Prinz (December 2005). C in a Nutshell. §16.11 – Process Control: O'Reilly. p. 618. ISBN 0-596-00697-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

[2] ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification (PDF). p. 315, § 7.20.4 "Communication with the environment". Retrieved 25 November 2011.

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