Catch Ctrl-C in C

Question

How does one catch Ctrl+C in C?

Answer 1

Addendum regarding UN*X platforms.

According to the signal(2) man page on GNU/Linux, the behavior of signal is not as portable as behavior of sigaction:

The behavior of signal() varies across UNIX versions, and has also varied historically across different versions of Linux. Avoid its use: use sigaction(2) instead.

On System V, system did not block delivery of further instances of the signal and delivery of a signal would reset the handler to the default one. In BSD the semantics changed.

The following variation of previous answer by Dirk Eddelbuettel uses sigaction instead of signal:

#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

static bool keepRunning = true;

void intHandler(int) {
    keepRunning = false;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    struct sigaction act;
    act.sa_handler = intHandler;
    sigaction(SIGINT, &act, NULL);

    while (keepRunning) {
        // main loop
    }
}

Answer 2

Or you can put the terminal in raw mode, like this:

struct termios term;

term.c_iflag |= IGNBRK;
term.c_iflag &= ~(INLCR | ICRNL | IXON | IXOFF);
term.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO | ECHOK | ECHOE | ECHONL | ISIG | IEXTEN);
term.c_cc[VMIN] = 1;
term.c_cc[VTIME] = 0;
tcsetattr(fileno(stdin), TCSANOW, &term);

Now it should be possible to read Ctrl+C keystrokes using fgetc(stdin). Beware using this though because you can't Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+S, etc. like normally any more either.

Answer 3

#include<stdio.h>
#include<signal.h>
#include<unistd.h>

void sig_handler(int signo)
{
  if (signo == SIGINT)
    printf("received SIGINT\n");
}

int main(void)
{
  if (signal(SIGINT, sig_handler) == SIG_ERR)
  printf("\ncan't catch SIGINT\n");
  // A long long wait so that we can easily issue a signal to this process
  while(1) 
    sleep(1);
  return 0;
}

The function sig_handler checks if the value of the argument passed is equal to the SIGINT, then the printf is executed.

Answer 4

Set up a trap (you can trap several signals with one handler):

signal (SIGQUIT, my_handler);
signal (SIGINT, my_handler);

Handle the signal however you want, but be aware of limitations and gotchas:

void my_handler (int sig)
{
  /* Your code here. */
}

Answer 5

Regarding existing answers, note that signal handling is platform dependent. Win32 for example handles far fewer signals than POSIX operating systems; see here. While SIGINT is declared in signals.h on Win32, see the note in the documentation that explains that it will not do what you might expect.

Answer 6

Check here:

• http://www.csl.mtu.edu/cs4411.ck/www/NOTES/signal/install.html

Note: Obviously, this is a simple example explaining just how to set up a CtrlC handler, but as always there are rules that need to be obeyed in order not to break something else. Please read the comments below.

The sample code from above:

#include  <stdio.h>
#include  <signal.h>
#include  <stdlib.h>

void     INThandler(int);

int  main(void)
{
     signal(SIGINT, INThandler);
     while (1)
          pause();
     return 0;
}

void  INThandler(int sig)
{
     char  c;

     signal(sig, SIG_IGN);
     printf("OUCH, did you hit Ctrl-C?\n"
            "Do you really want to quit? [y/n] ");
     c = getchar();
     if (c == 'y' || c == 'Y')
          exit(0);
     else
          signal(SIGINT, INThandler);
     getchar(); // Get new line character
}