Here's a demonstration - in Perl - that shows you how to avoid a ^C (Control C) dropping you straight out of a program.

Have you ever accidentally hit ^C in the wrong window and terminated a long-running process just before it finished ... well, by setting $SIG{INT} to the address of a sub you want to run, you can divert the signal in Perl. The example code here simulates a long running process with a loop of 60 short sleeps (naps?) ...

$SIG{"INT"} = \&nowayjose;
 
$| = 1;
 
for (1..60){
  print "dot";
  sleep 1;
 
  if ($rq) {
    exit if (time() - $recent < 4) ;
    print "\nNah\n";
    $rq = 0;
    $recent = time();
    }
  }
 
sub nowayjose {
  $rq = 1;
  }

You'll note that all my extra "sub" does is set a flag so that the interrupt can be nicely handled at the end of the loop, that the handler turns the interrupt flag back off, and that I've written the program so that a second ^C within 4 seconds WILL cause it to exit.

As an afterthought ... if you disable ^C completely (i.e. if you don't use the 4 second trick), how will you get out of the program? Well ... you'll still be able to suspend it with ^Z then kill it with kill %1, or you'll be able to find its process id and use a kill -9
(written 2008-12-05, updated 2008-12-07)

 P667 - Perl - Handling Huge Data
  [3375] How to interact with a Perl program while it is processing data - (2011-07-31)
  [3374] Speeding up your Perl code - (2011-07-30)
  [2834] Teaching examples in Perl - third and final part - (2010-06-27)
  [2806] Macho matching - do not do it! - (2010-06-13)
  [2805] How are you getting on? - (2010-06-13)
  [2376] Long job - progress bar techniques (Perl) - (2009-08-26)
  [1920] Progress Bar Techniques - Perl - (2008-12-03)
  [1397] Perl - progress bar, supressing ^C and coping with huge data flows - (2007-10-20)
  [975] Answering ALL the delegate's Perl questions - (2006-12-09)
  [762] Huge data files - what happened earlier? - (2006-06-15)
  [639] Progress bars and other dynamic reports - (2006-03-09)

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Melksham Oak Secondary School, Melksham, Wiltshire
Team changes at Well House - looking forward
Flash (client) to PHP (server) - example
Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
Preventing ^C stopping / killing a program - Perl
Making it all worthwhile
Flurinci knows Raby Lae PHP and Jeve
Romeo and Julie
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