HPR4627: UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

HPR4627: UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

From Hacker Public Radio by Hacker Public Radio

April 28, 2026

About this episode

This episode explores the UNIX kill command and its underlying signal handling mechanisms.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This series is dedicated to exploring little-known—and occasionally useful—trinkets lurking in the dusty corners of UNIX-like operating systems. Let me start by admitting that I've never actually seen the film referenced in the episode title, but I couldn't resist using it anyway. If you've used the UNIX command line to any extent, chances are good that you are familiar with the kill command. A common use is to terminate a misbehaving program. But there is more behind how kill works, including a curio you might not know about. The kill utility works by sending a "signal" to the targeted process. This signal is selected from a pre-defined list, and triggers the process to interrupt its normal flow and handle the signal before potentially returning back to its work. This "signal handler" can do whatever activities are written in its code, but typically it will take actions connected to the purpose of the specific signal received. One option is for the process not to have a signal handler at all; in that case, there is a default action that the operating system will take on behalf of the process, depending on what the signal is. The…

People in this episode

Host: Hacker Public Radio

Topics covered

  • UNIX
  • command line
  • kill command
  • signal handling
  • operating systems

Keywords

  • UNIX
  • kill command
  • signal
  • process
  • signal handler
  • operating system

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

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