I\'m looking at the poll() man page, and it tells me the behavior of poll() when positive and negative values are passed in for the timeout parameter.
It will return immediately:
If timeout is greater than zero, it specifies a maximum interval (in milliseconds) to wait for any file descriptor to become ready. If timeout is zero, then
poll()will return without blocking. If the value of timeout is-1, thepollblocks indefinitely.
, as of Mac OS X 10.5;
Maximum interval to wait for the poll to complete, in milliseconds. If this value is 0,
poll()will return immediately. If this value isINFTIM (-1),poll()will block indefinitely until a condition is found.
, as of OpenBSD 3.8