Introduction

Sometimes an application needs to save internal state or perform some cleanup activity before it exits, or needs to be able to reload a configuration file or write a memory/cpu profile on demand. In UNIX-like operating systems, signals can accomplish these tasks.

Example

The following code demonstrates a program that waits for an interrupt signal and removes a temporary file when it occurs.

    package main
    
    import (
        "io/ioutil"
        "os"
        "os/signal"
    )
    
    func main() {
        f, err := ioutil.TempFile("", "test")
        if err != nil {
            panic(err)
        }
        defer os.Remove(f.Name())
        sig := make(chan os.Signal, 1)
        signal.Notify(sig, os.Interrupt)
        <-sig
    }