Providing/passing argument to signal handler

Question

Can I provide/pass any arguments to signal handler?

/* Signal handling */
struct sigaction act;
act.sa_handler = signal_handler;
/* some more settings */
         


        

Answer 1

Store the names of the files in a global variable and then access it from the handler. The signal handler callback will only be passed one argument: the ID for the actual signal that caused the problem (eg SIGINT, SIGTSTP)

Edit 0: "There must be a rock solid reason for not allowing arguments to the handler." <-- There is an interrupt vector (basically, a set of jump addresses to routines for each possible signal). Given the way that the interrupt is triggered, based on the interrupt vector, a particular function is called. Unfortunately, it's not clear where the memory associated with the variable will be called, and depending on the interrupt that memory may actually be corrupted. There is a way to get around it, but then you can't leverage the existing int 0x80 assembly instruction (which some systems still use)