Jump to content United States-English
HP.com Home Products and Services Support and Drivers Solutions How to Buy
» Contact HP
More options
HP.com home
HP-UX Reference > S

sem_post(2)

HP-UX 11i Version 3: February 2007
» 

Technical documentation

» Feedback
Content starts here

 » Table of Contents

 » Index

NAME

sem_post — unlock a POSIX semaphore

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/semaphore.h>

int sem_post(sem_t *sem);

DESCRIPTION

sem_post() is used to post the semaphore referenced by sem. The calling thread will not return from its call to sem_post() unless it can either: increment the semaphore value, if there are no blocked threads on this semaphore; give the semaphore to a blocked thread, if there are any blocked threads on this semaphore; or have an error condition.

If the semaphore value is < 0, the semaphore has blocked threads, waiting for it to become available (the absolute value of the semaphore's value indicates the number of waiters at that moment). If the semaphore value is >= 0, the semaphore has no waiters.

If the semaphore has no waiters at the time its value is checked, the semaphore's value will be atomically incremented, with respect to the checking of its value, up to its maximum value as specified by {_POSIX_SEM_VALUE_MAX}. If the semaphore has waiters at the time its value is checked, the semaphore value is not changed. Instead, the calling thread will attempt to wake up a waiter. If the semaphore has waiters having realtime priorities, the thread must wake up the highest priority waiter. Otherwise the thread at the head of the channel queue is woken up.

When a waiter is successfully woken, the semaphore being posted will be given to the woken waiter. In other words, the state of the semaphore remains unchanged. Instead, the semaphore being posted will be inherited by the waiter being woken from this call to sem_post().

If the specified semaphore referred to by sem is a named semaphore, then this semaphore must have been opened by the calling process with sem_open(). The calling process must have both read and write permissions on the semaphore to perform this operation. The sem_post() routine may be called asynchronously, i.e. from a signal handler.

To use this function, link in the realtime library by specifying -lrt on the compiler or linker command line.

EXAMPLES

The following call to sem_post() will post the semaphore sem.

sem_post(sem);

RETURN VALUE

A successful call to sem_post() will return 0 and the calling thread would have posted the semaphore. Otherwise, the call to sem_post() will return -1 with errno set to the appropriate value of the error condition.

ERRORS

sem_post() fails and does not perform the requested operation if any of the following conditions are encountered:

[EPERM]

The calling process does not have the privileges necessary to post the semaphore.

[EINVAL]

The argument sem does not refer to a valid semaphore.

SEE ALSO

<semaphore.h>.

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

sem_post(): POSIX

Printable version
Privacy statement Using this site means you accept its terms Feedback to webmaster
© 1983-2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.