Please remember in multi-process applications (which are best suited under CLI), that I/O operations often will BLOCK signals from being processed.

For instance, if you have a parent waiting on fread(STDIN), it won't handle SIGCHLD, even if you defined a signal handler for it, until after the call to fread has returned. 

Your solution in this case is to wait on stream_select() to find out whether reading will block. Waiting on stream_select(), critically, does NOT BLOCK signals from being processed. 

Aurelien