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   7<CENTER><H2>Proper handling of SIGINT/SIGQUIT</H2></CENTER>
   8<img src=linie.png width="100%" alt=" ">
   9<P>
  10
  11<table border=1 cellpadding=4>
  12<tr><th valign=top align=left>Abstract: </th>
  13<td valign=top align=left>
  14In UNIX terminal sessions, you usually have a key like
  15<code>C-c</code> (Control-C) to immediately end whatever program you
  16have running in the foreground. This should work even when the program
  17you called has called other programs in turn. Everything should be
  18aborted, giving you your command prompt back, no matter how deep the
  19call stack is.
  20
  21<p>Basically, it's trivial. But the existence of interactive
  22applications that use SIGINT and/or SIGQUIT for other purposes than a
  23complete immediate abort make matters complicated, and - as was to
  24expect - left us with several ways to solve the problems. Of course,
  25existing shells and applications follow different ways.
  26
  27<P>This Web pages outlines different ways to solve the problem and
  28argues that only one of them can do everything right, although it
  29means that we have to fix some existing software.
  30
  31
  32
  33</td></tr><tr><th valign=top align=left>Intended audience: </th>
  34<td valign=top align=left>Programmers who implement programs that catch SIGINT/SIGQUIT.
  35<BR>Programmers who implements shells or shell-like programs that
  36execute batches of programs.
  37
  38<p>Users who have problems problems getting rid of runaway shell
  39scripts using <code>Control-C</code>. Or have interactive applications
  40that don't behave right when sending SIGINT. Examples are emacs'es
  41that die on Control-g or shellscript statements that sometimes are
  42executed and sometimes not, apparently not determined by the user's
  43intention.
  44
  45
  46</td></tr><tr><th valign=top align=left>Required knowledge: </th>
  47<td valign=top align=left>You have to know what it means to catch SIGINT or SIGQUIT and how
  48processes are waiting for other processes (children) they spawned.
  49
  50
  51</td></tr></table>
  52<img src=linie.png width="100%" alt=" ">
  53
  54
  55<H3>Basic concepts</H3>
  56
  57What technically happens when you press Control-C is that all programs
  58running in the foreground in your current terminal (or virtual
  59terminal) get the signal SIGINT sent.
  60
  61<p>You may change the key that triggers the signal using
  62<code>stty</code> and running programs may remap the SIGINT-sending
  63key at any time they like, without your intervention and without
  64asking you first.
  65
  66<p>The usual reaction of a running program to SIGINT is to exit.
  67However, not all program do an exit on SIGINT, programs are free to
  68use the signal for other actions or to ignore it at all.
  69
  70<p>All programs running in the foreground receive the signal. This may
  71be a nested "stack" of programs: You started a program that started
  72another and the outer is waiting for the inner to exit. This nesting
  73may be arbitrarily deep.
  74
  75<p>The innermost program is the one that decides what to do on SIGINT.
  76It may exit, do something else or do nothing. Still, when the user hit
  77SIGINT, all the outer programs are awaken, get the signal and may
  78react on it.
  79
  80<H3>What we try to achieve</H3>
  81
  82The problem is with shell scripts (or similar programs that call
  83several subprograms one after another).
  84
  85<p>Let us consider the most basic script:
  86<PRE>
  87#! /bin/sh
  88program1
  89program2
  90</PRE>
  91and the usual run looks like this:
  92<PRE>
  93$ sh myscript
  94[output of program1]
  95[output of program2]
  96$
  97</PRE>
  98
  99<p>Let us assume that both programs do nothing special on SIGINT, they
 100just exit.
 101
 102<p>Now imagine the user hits C-c while a shellscript is executing its
 103first program. The following programs receive SIGINT: program1 and
 104also the shell executing the script. program1 exits.
 105
 106<p>But what should the shell do? If we say that it is only the
 107innermost's programs business to react on SIGINT, the shell will do
 108nothing special (not exit) and it will continue the execution of the
 109script and run program2. But this is wrong: The user's intention in
 110hitting C-c is to abort the whole script, to get his prompt back. If
 111he hits C-c while the first program is running, he does not want
 112program2 to be even started.
 113
 114<p>here is what would happen if the shell doesn't do anything:
 115<PRE>
 116$ sh myscript
 117[first half of program1's output]
 118C-c   [users presses C-c]
 119[second half of program1's output will not be displayed]
 120[output of program2 will appear]
 121</PRE>
 122
 123
 124<p>Consider a more annoying example:
 125<pre>
 126#! /bin/sh
 127# let's assume there are 300 *.dat files
 128for file in *.dat ; do
 129        dat2ascii $dat
 130done
 131</pre>
 132
 133If your shell wouldn't end if the user hits <code>C-c</code>,
 134<code>C-c</code> would just end <strong>one</strong> dat2ascii run and
 135the script would continue. Thus, you had to hit <code>C-c</code> up to
 136300 times to end this script.
 137
 138<H3>Alternatives to do so</H3>
 139
 140<p>There are several ways to handle abortion of shell scripts when
 141SIGINT is received while a foreground child runs:
 142
 143<menu>
 144
 145<li>As just outlined, the shellscript may just continue, ignoring the
 146fact that the user hit <code>C-c</code>. That way, your shellscript -
 147including any loops - would continue and you had no chance of aborting
 148it except using the kill command after finding out the outermost
 149shell's PID. This "solution" will not be discussed further, as it is
 150obviously not desirable.
 151
 152<p><li>The shell itself exits immediately when it receives SIGINT. Not
 153only the program called will exit, but the calling (the
 154script-executing) shell. The first variant is to exit the shell (and
 155therefore discontinuing execution of the script) immediately, while
 156the background program may still be executing (remember that although
 157the shell is just waiting for the called program to exit, it is woken
 158up and may act). I will call the way of doing things the "IUE" (for
 159"immediate unconditional exit") for the rest of this document.
 160
 161<p><li>As a variant of the former, when the shell receives SIGINT
 162while it is waiting for a child to exit, the shell does not exit
 163immediately. but it remembers the fact that a SIGINT happened. After
 164the called program exits and the shell's wait ends, the shell will
 165exit itself and hence discontinue the script. I will call the way of
 166doing things the "WUE" (for "wait and unconditional exit") for the
 167rest of this document.
 168
 169<p><li>There is also a way that the calling shell can tell whether the
 170called program exited on SIGINT and if it ignored SIGINT (or used it
 171for other purposes). As in the <sl>WUE</sl> way, the shell waits for
 172the child to complete. It figures whether the program was ended on
 173SIGINT and if so, it discontinue the script. If the program did any
 174other exit, the script will be continued. I will call the way of doing
 175things the "WCE" (for "wait and cooperative exit") for the rest of
 176this document.
 177
 178</menu>
 179
 180<H3>The problem</H3>
 181
 182On first sight, all three solutions (IUE, WUE and WCE) all seem to do
 183what we want: If C-c is hit while the first program of the shell
 184script runs, the script is discontinued. The user gets his prompt back
 185immediately. So what are the difference between these way of handling
 186SIGINT?
 187
 188<p>There are programs that use the signal SIGINT for other purposes
 189than exiting. They use it as a normal keystroke. The user is expected
 190to use the key that sends SIGINT during a perfectly normal program
 191run. As a result, the user sends SIGINT in situations where he/she
 192does not want the program or the script to end.
 193
 194<p>The primary example is the emacs editor: C-g does what ESC does in
 195other applications: It cancels a partially executed or prepared
 196operation. Technically, emacs remaps the key that sends SIGINT from
 197C-c to C-g and catches SIGINT.
 198
 199<p>Remember that the SIGINT is sent to all programs running in the
 200foreground. If emacs is executing from a shell script, both emacs and
 201the shell get SIGINT. emacs is the program that decides what to do:
 202Exit on SIGINT or not. emacs decides not to exit. The problem arises
 203when the shell draws its own conclusions from receiving SIGINT without
 204consulting emacs for its opinion.
 205
 206<p>Consider this script:
 207<PRE>
 208#! /bin/sh
 209emacs /tmp/foo
 210cp /tmp/foo /home/user/mail/sent
 211</PRE>
 212
 213<p>If C-g is used in emacs, both the shell and emacs will received
 214SIGINT. Emacs will not exit, the user used C-g as a normal editing
 215keystroke, he/she does not want the script to be aborted on C-g.
 216
 217<p>The central problem is that the second command (cp) may
 218unintentionally be killed when the shell draws its own conclusion
 219about the user's intention. The innermost program is the only one to
 220judge.
 221
 222<H3>One more example</H3>
 223
 224<p>Imagine a mail session using a curses mailer in a tty. You called
 225your mailer and started to compose a message. Your mailer calls emacs.
 226<code>C-g</code> is a normal editing key in emacs. Technically it
 227sends SIGINT (it was <code>C-c</code>, but emacs remapped the key) to
 228<menu>
 229<li>emacs
 230<li>the shell between your mailer and emacs, the one from your mailers
 231    system("emacs /tmp/bla.44") command
 232<li>the mailer itself
 233<li>possibly another shell if your mailer was called by a shell script
 234or from another application using system(3)
 235<li>your interactive shell (which ignores it since it is interactive
 236and hence is not relevant to this discussion)
 237</menu>
 238
 239<p>If everyone just exits on SIGINT, you will be left with nothing but
 240your login shell, without asking.
 241
 242<p>But for sure you don't want to be dropped out of your editor and
 243out of your mailer back to the commandline, having your edited data
 244and mailer status deleted.
 245
 246<p>Understand the difference: While <code>C-g</code> is used an a kind
 247of abort key in emacs, it isn't the major "abort everything" key. When
 248you use <code>C-g</code> in emacs, you want to end some internal emacs
 249command. You don't want your whole emacs and mailer session to end.
 250
 251<p>So, if the shell exits immediately if the user sends SIGINT (the
 252second of the four ways shown above), the parent of emacs would die,
 253leaving emacs without the controlling tty. The user will lose it's
 254editing session immediately and unrecoverable. If the "main" shell of
 255the operating system defaults to this behavior, every editor session
 256that is spawned from a mailer or such will break (because it is
 257usually executed by system(3), which calls /bin/sh). This was the case
 258in FreeBSD before I and Bruce Evans changed it in 1998.
 259
 260<p>If the shell recognized that SIGINT was sent and exits after the
 261current foreground process exited (the third way of the four), the
 262editor session will not be disturbed, but things will still not work
 263right.
 264
 265<H3>A further look at the alternatives</H3>
 266
 267<p>Still considering this script to examine the shell's actions in the
 268IUE, WUE and ICE way of handling SIGINT:
 269<PRE>
 270#! /bin/sh
 271emacs /tmp/foo
 272cp /tmp/foo /home/user/mail/sent
 273</PRE>
 274
 275<p>The IUE ("immediate unconditional exit") way does not work at all:
 276emacs wants to survive the SIGINT (it's a normal editing key for
 277emacs), but its parent shell unconditionally thinks "We received
 278SIGINT. Abort everything. Now.". The shell will exit even before emacs
 279exits. But this will leave emacs in an unusable state, since the death
 280of its calling shell will leave it without required resources (file
 281descriptors). This way does not work at all for shellscripts that call
 282programs that use SIGINT for other purposes than immediate exit. Even
 283for programs that exit on SIGINT, but want to do some cleanup between
 284the signal and the exit, may fail before they complete their cleanup.
 285
 286<p>It should be noted that this way has one advantage: If a child
 287blocks SIGINT and does not exit at all, this way will get control back
 288to the user's terminal. Since such programs should be banned from your
 289system anyway, I don't think that weighs against the disadvantages.
 290
 291<p>WUE ("wait and unconditional exit") is a little more clever: If C-g
 292was used in emacs, the shell will get SIGINT. It will not immediately
 293exit, but remember the fact that a SIGINT happened. When emacs ends
 294(maybe a long time after the SIGINT), it will say "Ok, a SIGINT
 295happened sometime while the child was executing, the user wants the
 296script to be discontinued". It will then exit. The cp will not be
 297executed. But that's bad. The "cp" will be executed when the emacs
 298session ended without the C-g key ever used, but it will not be
 299executed when the user used C-g at least one time. That is clearly not
 300desired. Since C-g is a normal editing key in emacs, the user expects
 301the rest of the script to behave identically no matter what keys he
 302used.
 303
 304<p>As a result, the "WUE" way is better than the "IUE" way in that it
 305does not break SIGINT-using programs completely. The emacs session
 306will end undisturbed. But it still does not support scripts where
 307other actions should be performed after a program that use SIGINT for
 308non-exit purposes. Since the behavior is basically undeterminable for
 309the user, this can lead to nasty surprises.
 310
 311<p>The "WCE" way fixes this by "asking" the called program whether it
 312exited on SIGINT or not. While emacs receives SIGINT, it does not exit
 313on it and a calling shell waiting for its exit will not be told that
 314it exited on SIGINT. (Although it receives SIGINT at some point in
 315time, the system does not enforce that emacs will exit with
 316"I-exited-on-SIGINT" status. This is under emacs' control, see below).
 317
 318<p>this still work for the normal script without SIGINT-using
 319programs:</p>
 320<PRE>
 321#! /bin/sh
 322program1
 323program2
 324</PRE>
 325
 326Unless program1 and program2 mess around with signal handling, the
 327system will tell the calling shell whether the programs exited
 328normally or as a result of SIGINT.
 329
 330<p>The "WCE" way then has an easy way to things right: When one called
 331program exited with "I-exited-on-SIGINT" status, it will discontinue
 332the script after this program. If the program ends without this
 333status, the next command in the script is started.
 334
 335<p>It is important to understand that a shell in "WCE" modus does not
 336need to listen to the SIGINT signal at all. Both in the
 337"emacs-then-cp" script and in the "several-normal-programs" script, it
 338will be woken up and receive SIGINT when the user hits the
 339corresponding key. But the shell does not need to react on this event
 340and it doesn't need to remember the event of any SIGINT, either.
 341Telling whether the user wants to end a script is done by asking that
 342program that has to decide, that program that interprets keystrokes
 343from the user, the innermost program.
 344
 345<H3>So everything is well with WCE?</H3>
 346
 347Well, almost.
 348
 349<p>The problem with the "WCE" modus is that there are broken programs
 350that do not properly communicate the required information up to the
 351calling program.
 352
 353<p>Unless a program messes with signal handling, the system does this
 354automatically.
 355
 356<p>There are programs that want to exit on SIGINT, but they don't let
 357the system do the automatic exit, because they want to do some
 358cleanup. To do so, they catch SIGINT, do the cleanup and then exit by
 359themselves.
 360
 361<p>And here is where the problem arises: Once they catch the signal,
 362the system will no longer communicate the "I-exited-on-SIGINT" status
 363to the calling program automatically. Even if the program exit
 364immediately in the signal handler of SIGINT. Once it catches the
 365signal, it has to take care of communicating the signal status
 366itself.
 367
 368<p>Some programs don't do this. On SIGINT, they do cleanup and exit
 369immediately, but the calling shell isn't told about the non-normal exit
 370and it will call the next program in the script.
 371
 372<p>As a result, the user hits SIGINT and while one program exits, the
 373shellscript continues. To him/her it looks like the shell fails to
 374obey to his abortion command.
 375
 376<p>Both IUE or WUE shell would not have this problem, since they
 377discontinue the script on their own. But as I said, they don't support
 378programs using SIGINT for non-exiting purposes, no matter whether
 379these programs properly communicate their signal status to the calling
 380shell or not.
 381
 382<p>Since some shell in wide use implement the WUE way (and some even
 383IUE), there is a considerable number of broken programs out there that
 384break WCE shells. The programmers just don't recognize it if their
 385shell isn't WCE.
 386
 387<H3>How to be a proper program</H3>
 388
 389<p>(Short note in advance: What you need to achieve is that
 390WIFSIGNALED(status) is true in the calling program and that
 391WTERMSIG(status) returns SIGINT.)
 392
 393<p>If you don't catch SIGINT, the system automatically does the right
 394thing for you: Your program exits and the calling program gets the
 395right "I-exited-on-SIGINT" status after waiting for your exit.
 396
 397<p>But once you catch SIGINT, you have to act.
 398
 399<p>Decide whether the SIGINT is used for exit/abort purposes and hence
 400a shellscript calling this program should discontinue. This is
 401hopefully obvious. If you just need to do some cleanup on SIGINT, but
 402then exit immediately, the answer is "yes".
 403
 404<p>If so, you have to tell the calling program about it by exiting
 405with the "I-exited-on-SIGINT" status.
 406
 407<p>There is no other way of doing this than to kill yourself with a
 408SIGINT signal. Do it by resetting the SIGINT handler to SIG_DFL, then
 409send yourself the signal.
 410
 411<PRE>
 412void sigint_handler(int sig)
 413{
 414        <do some cleanup>
 415        signal(SIGINT, SIG_DFL);
 416        kill(getpid(), SIGINT);
 417}
 418</PRE>
 419
 420Notes:
 421
 422<MENU>
 423
 424<LI>You cannot "fake" the proper exit status by an exit(3) with a
 425special numeric value. People often assume this since the manuals for
 426shells often list some return value for exactly this. But this is just
 427a convention for your shell script. It does not work from one UNIX API
 428program to another.
 429
 430<P>All that happens is that the shell sets the "$?" variable to a
 431special numeric value for the convenience of your script, because your
 432script does not have access to the lower-lever UNIX status evaluation
 433functions. This is just an agreement between your script and the
 434executing shell, it does not have any meaning in other contexts.
 435
 436<P><LI>Do not use kill(0, SIGINT) without consulting the manul for
 437your OS implementation. I.e. on BSD, this would not send the signal to
 438the current process, but to all processes in the group.
 439
 440<P><LI>POSIX 1003.1 allows all these calls to appear in signal
 441handlers, so it is portable.
 442
 443</MENU>
 444
 445<p>In a bourne shell script, you can catch signals using the
 446<code>trap</code> command. Here, the same as for C programs apply.  If
 447the intention of SIGINT is to end your program, you have to exit in a
 448way that the calling programs "sees" that you have been killed.  If
 449you don't catch SIGINT, this happened automatically, but of you catch
 450SIGINT, i.e. to do cleanup work, you have to end the program by
 451killing yourself, not by calling exit.
 452
 453<p>Consider this example from FreeBSD's <code>mkdep</code>, which is a
 454bourne shell script.
 455
 456<pre>
 457TMP=_mkdep$$
 458trap 'rm -f $TMP ; trap 2 ; kill -2 $$' 1 2 3 13 15
 459</pre>
 460
 461Yes, you have to do it the hard way. It's even more annoying in shell
 462scripts than in C programs since you can't "pre-delete" temporary
 463files (which isn't really portable in C, though).
 464
 465<P>All this applies to programs in all languages, not only C and
 466bourne shell. Every language implementation that lets you catch SIGINT
 467should also give you the option to reset the signal and kill yourself.
 468
 469<P>It is always desirable to exit the right way, even if you don't
 470expect your usual callers to depend on it, some unusual one will come
 471along. This proper exit status will be needed for WCE and will not
 472hurt when the calling shell uses IUE or WUE.
 473
 474<H3>How to be a proper shell</H3>
 475
 476All this applies only for the script-executing case. Most shells will
 477also have interactive modes where things are different.
 478
 479<MENU>
 480
 481<LI>Do nothing special when SIGINT appears while you wait for a child.
 482You don't even have to remember that one happened.
 483
 484<P><LI>Wait for child to exit, get the exit status. Do not truncate it
 485to type char.
 486
 487<P><LI>Look at WIFSIGNALED(status) and WTERMSIG(status) to tell
 488whether the child says "I exited on SIGINT: in my opinion the user
 489wants the shellscript to be discontinued".
 490
 491<P><LI>If the latter applies, discontinue the script.
 492
 493<P><LI>Exit. But since a shellscript may in turn be called by a
 494shellscript, you need to make sure that you properly communicate the
 495discontinue intention to the calling program. As in any other program
 496(see above), do
 497
 498<PRE>
 499        signal(SIGINT, SIG_DFL);
 500        kill(getpid(), SIGINT);
 501</PRE>
 502
 503</MENU>
 504
 505<H3>Other remarks</H3>
 506
 507Although this web page talks about SIGINT only, almost the same issues
 508apply to SIGQUIT, including proper exiting by killing yourself after
 509catching the signal and proper reaction on the WIFSIGNALED(status)
 510value. One notable difference for SIGQUIT is that you have to make
 511sure that not the whole call tree dumps core.
 512
 513<H3>What to fight</H3>
 514
 515Make sure all programs <em>really</em> kill themselves if they react
 516to SIGINT or SIGQUIT and intend to abort their operation as a result
 517of this signal. Programs that don't use SIGINT/SIGQUIT as a
 518termination trigger - but as part of normal operation - don't kill
 519themselves, but do a normal exit instead.
 520
 521<p>Make sure people understand why you can't fake an exit-on-signal by
 522doing exit(...) using any numerical status.
 523
 524<p>Make sure you use a shell that behaves right. Especially if you
 525develop programs, since it will help seeing problems.
 526
 527<H3>Concrete examples how to fix programs:</H3>
 528<ul>
 529
 530<li>The fix for FreeBSD's
 531<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/time/time.c.diff?r1=1.10&r2=1.11">time(1)</A>. This fix is the best example, it's quite short and clear and
 532it fixes a case where someone tried to fake signal exit status by a
 533numerical value. And the complete program is small.
 534
 535<p><li>Fix for FreeBSD's
 536<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/truss/main.c.diff?r1=1.9&r2=1.10">truss(1)</A>.
 537
 538<p><li>The fix for FreeBSD's
 539<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/mkdep/mkdep.gcc.sh.diff?r1=1.8.2.1&r2=1.8.2.2">mkdep(1)</A>, a shell script.
 540
 541
 542<p><li>Fix for FreeBSD's make(1), <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/make/job.c.diff?r1=1.9&r2=1.10">part 1</A>,
 543<A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/make/compat.c.diff?r1=1.10&r2=1.11">part 2</A>.
 544
 545</ul>
 546
 547<H3>Testsuite for shells</H3>
 548
 549I have a collection of shellscripts that test shells for the
 550behavior. See my <A HREF="download/">download dir</A> to get the newest
 551"sh-interrupt" files, either as a tarfile or as individual file for
 552online browsing. This isn't really documented, besides from the
 553comments the scripts echo.
 554
 555<H3>Appendix 1 - table of implementation choices</H3>
 556
 557<table border cellpadding=2>
 558
 559<tr valign=top>
 560<th>Method sign</th>
 561<th>Does what?</th>
 562<th>Example shells that implement it:</th>
 563<th>What happens when a shellscript called emacs, the user used
 564<code>C-g</code> and the script has additional commands in it?</th>
 565<th>What happens when a shellscript called emacs, the user did not use
 566<code>C-c</code> and the script has additional commands in it?</th>
 567<th>What happens if a non-interactive child catches SIGINT?</th>
 568<th>To behave properly, children must do what?</th>
 569</tr>
 570
 571<tr valign=top align=left>
 572<td>IUE</td>
 573<td>The shell executing a script exits immediately if it receives
 574SIGINT.</td>
 575<td>4.4BSD ash (ash), NetBSD, FreeBSD prior to 3.0/22.8</td>
 576<td>The editor session is lost and subsequent commands are not
 577executed.</td>
 578<td>The editor continues as normal and the subsequent commands are
 579executed. </td>
 580<td>The scripts ends immediately, returning to the caller even before
 581the current foreground child of the shell exits. </td>
 582<td>It doesn't matter what the child does or how it exits, even if the
 583child continues to operate, the shell returns. </td>
 584</tr>
 585
 586<tr valign=top align=left>
 587<td>WUE</td>
 588<td>If the shell executing a script received SIGINT while a foreground
 589process was running, it will exit after that child's exit.</td>
 590<td>pdksh (OpenBSD /bin/sh)</td>
 591<td>The editor continues as normal, but subsequent commands from the
 592script are not executed.</td>
 593<td>The editor continues as normal and subsequent commands are
 594executed. </td>
 595<td>The scripts returns to its caller after the current foreground
 596child exits, no matter how the child exited. </td>
 597<td>It doesn't matter how the child exits (signal status or not), but
 598if it doesn't return at all, the shell will not return. In no case
 599will further commands from the script be executed. </td>
 600</tr>
 601
 602<tr valign=top align=left>
 603<td>WCE</td>
 604<td>The shell exits if a child signaled that it was killed on a
 605signal (either it had the default handler for SIGINT or it killed
 606itself).  </td>
 607<td>bash (Linux /bin/sh), most commercial /bin/sh, FreeBSD /bin/sh
 608from 3.0/2.2.8.</td>
 609<td>The editor continues as normal and subsequent commands are
 610executed. </td>
 611<td>The editor continues as normal and subsequent commands are
 612executed. </td>
 613<td>The scripts returns to its caller after the current foreground
 614child exits, but only if the child exited with signal status. If
 615the child did a normal exit (even if it received SIGINT, but catches
 616it), the script will continue. </td>
 617<td>The child must be implemented right, or the user will not be able
 618to break shell scripts reliably.</td>
 619</tr>
 620
 621</table>
 622
 623<P><img src=linie.png width="100%" alt=" ">
 624<BR>&copy;2005 Martin Cracauer &lt;cracauer @ cons.org&gt;
 625<A HREF="http://www.cons.org/cracauer/">http://www.cons.org/cracauer/</A>
 626<BR>Last changed: $Date: 2005/02/11 21:44:43 $
 627</BODY></HTML>
 628