I have a process, and when I issue ctrl+c in the terminal, it closes the terminal window completely, anybody know why that might be happening?
This is how the process is now started:
exec "$(dirname "$0")/suman-shell" # a
it used to be started like so, and there was no problem:
"./$(dirname "$0")/suman-shell" # b
it does look like using exec is what is causing the terminal window to close, so why does a close the terminal window, but not b, after receiving a signal?
Usually all commands (which are not shell builtins) are executed in a subshell i.e. the main process forks and the new process executes (becomes) the command while the main process (usually) waits for the child process to finish.
That is the reason why (apart from sending a signal) the child process cannot affect the main process.
If a command is started with the shell builtin exec then the main process does not fork but turns into the command (via the syscall execve()). Thus after the exit of the command there is no more main process to return to.
From the perspective of the terminal emulator the shell has exited (as soon as the exec command has exited) and thus the window closes.
execand is killed withCtrl-C, then there is no shell to return to. In this case the terminal emulator quits, just like it quits when you exit a shell running in it.straceto the terminal emulator and to the application. Then you should see what happens. I assume that either the process has been started withexecfrom the running shell (so that the terminal window would close after the process exits normally, too) or that the signal handler (whyever) kills the terminal emulator.exec! I would never have figured that out if it weren't for these comments - any idea whyaandbbehave differently? (see updated question).