Chapter 8, Problem 8.23HW

One of your colleagues is thinking of using signals to allow a parent process to count events that occur in a child process. The idea is to notify the parent each time an event occurs by sending it a signal and letting the parent's signal handler increment a global counter variable, which the parent can then inspect after the child has terminated. However, when he runs the test program in Figure 8.45 on his system, he discovers that when the parent calls printf, counter always has a value of 2, even though the child has sent five signals to the parent. Perplexed, he comes to you for help. Can you explain the bug?

Figure 8.45 Counter program referenced in Problem 8-23.