What is SIGTERM used for?

SIGTERM (signal 15) is used to request a process to terminate gracefully. When a process receives this signal, it is expected to clean up resources, close files, and perform any necessary shutdown operations before exiting. This allows the process to terminate in an orderly manner rather than being abruptly killed. If a process does not respond to SIGTERM, a more forceful signal like SIGKILL (signal 9) can be used to terminate it immediately.