https://nalar.dev/tags/timers/ Recent content in Timers on Nalar Hugo en-us Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0700 https://nalar.dev/integrate-timers-into-linux-event-loops-with-timerfd/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0700 https://nalar.dev/integrate-timers-into-linux-event-loops-with-timerfd/ <p>Event loops work best when unrelated kinds of work have one common waiting mechanism. Sockets become readable. Pipes become writable. A child-process descriptor or signal descriptor can become ready. Timers are often the awkward exception.</p> <p>A program can call <code>sleep()</code> or <code>nanosleep()</code>, but that blocks the thread instead of letting it wait for I/O. It can pass a timeout to <code>poll()</code> or <code>epoll_wait()</code>, but one timeout becomes difficult to manage when the program has several independent deadlines. Traditional POSIX timers can deliver signals, which introduces a second asynchronous control path.</p>