HACKTUX notes from the trenches

Do you want to catch control-c keyboard interrupts in your Bash program? Use the Bash builtin trap command to catch system signals. The following runs control_c() when a user interrupts the main() section with a Control-C (SIGINT).

#!/bin/bash
 
cleanup()
# example cleanup function
{
  rm -f /tmp/tempfile
  return $?
}
 
control_c()
# run if user hits control-c
{
  echo -en "\n*** Ouch! Exiting ***\n"
  cleanup
  exit $?
}
 
# trap keyboard interrupt (control-c)
trap control_c SIGINT
 
# main() loop
while true; do read x; done