On POSIX

POSIX

POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

-compliant platforms, SIGCONT is the signal

Signal (computing)

A signal is a limited form of inter-process communication used in Unix, Unix-like, and other POSIX-compliant operating systems. Essentially it is an asynchronous notification sent to a process in order to notify it of an event that occurred. When a signal is sent to a process, the operating system...

 sent to restart a process

Process (computing)

In computing, a process is an instance of a computer program that is being executed. It contains the program code and its current activity. Depending on the operating system , a process may be made up of multiple threads of execution that execute instructions concurrently.A computer program is a...

 previously paused by the SIGSTOP

SIGSTOP

On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGSTOP is the signal sent to a process to stop it for later resumption. The symbolic constant for SIGSTOP is defined in the header file signal.h. Symbolic signal names are used because signal numbers can vary across platforms....

 or SIGTSTP

SIGTSTP

SIGTSTP is a signal in a Unix computer system that tells a program to stop temporarily. On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGTSTP is the signal sent to a process by its controlling terminal when the user requests that the process be suspended. The symbolic constant for SIGTSTP is defined in the header...

 signal. The symbolic constant

C preprocessor

The C preprocessor is the preprocessor for the C and C++ computer programming languages. The preprocessor handles directives for source file inclusion , macro definitions , and conditional inclusion ....

 for SIGCONT is defined in the header file

Header file

Some programming languages use header files. These files allow programmers to separate certain elements of a program's source code into reusable files. Header files commonly contain forward declarations of classes, subroutines, variables, and other identifiers...

 signal.h. Symbolic signal names are used because signal numbers can vary across platforms.

Etymology

SIG is a common prefix for signal names. CONT is an abbreviation

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

 for continue.

Usage

When SIGSTOP

SIGSTOP

On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGSTOP is the signal sent to a process to stop it for later resumption. The symbolic constant for SIGSTOP is defined in the header file signal.h. Symbolic signal names are used because signal numbers can vary across platforms....

 or SIGTSTP

SIGTSTP

SIGTSTP is a signal in a Unix computer system that tells a program to stop temporarily. On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGTSTP is the signal sent to a process by its controlling terminal when the user requests that the process be suspended. The symbolic constant for SIGTSTP is defined in the header...

 is sent to a process, the usual behaviour is to pause that process in its current state. The process will only resume execution if it is sent the SIGCONT signal. SIGSTOP and SIGCONT are used for job control in the Unix shell

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...

, among other purposes.