sem_destroy(3) — Linux manual page

sem_destroy(3)           Library Functions Manual          sem_destroy(3)

NAME         top

       sem_destroy - destroy an unnamed semaphore

LIBRARY         top

       POSIX threads library (libpthread, -lpthread)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <semaphore.h>

       int sem_destroy(sem_t *sem);

DESCRIPTION         top

       sem_destroy() destroys the unnamed semaphore at the address
       pointed to by sem.

       Only a semaphore that has been initialized by sem_init(3) should
       be destroyed using sem_destroy().

       Destroying a semaphore that other processes or threads are
       currently blocked on (in sem_wait(3)) produces undefined behavior.

       Using a semaphore that has been destroyed produces undefined
       results, until the semaphore has been reinitialized using
       sem_init(3).

RETURN VALUE         top

       sem_destroy() returns 0 on success; on error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EINVAL sem is not a valid semaphore.

ATTRIBUTES         top

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).
       ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
       │ Interface                            │ Attribute     │ Value   │
       ├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
       │ sem_destroy()                        │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
       └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘

STANDARDS         top

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES         top

       An unnamed semaphore should be destroyed with sem_destroy() before
       the memory in which it is located is deallocated.  Failure to do
       this can result in resource leaks on some implementations.

SEE ALSO         top

       sem_init(3), sem_post(3), sem_wait(3), sem_overview(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
       user-space interface documentation) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
       This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
       fetched from
       ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
       2025-08-11.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
       version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
       to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
       improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
       part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Linux man-pages 6.15            2025-05-17                 sem_destroy(3)

Pages that refer to this page: sem_init(3),  sem_overview(7)

HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH.