C process control

Miscellaneous headers:

<assert.h>
<errno.h>
<iso646.h>
<setjmp.h>
<signal.h>
<stdarg.h>

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++).

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
atexit - registers a function to be called on exit() invocation

Communicating with the environment

getenv - accesses the list of the environment variables
system - calls the host environment's command processor

References

^ Crawford, Tony; Peter Prinz (December 2005). C in Nutshell. §16.11 - Process Control: O'Reilly. pp. 618. ISBN 0-596-00697-7.
^ ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification. p. 315, § 7.20.4 "Communication with the environment". http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1124.pdf. Retrieved 25 November 2011.