Keyboard interrupt in debug mode PyCharm

Question

Is there any way to send a keyboard interrupt event in PyCharm IDE (3.1) while in the debugging mode?

I need the same thing. I need to be able to gracefully stop a script with handling code using CTRL-C or the like, not just use the Stop button. — fantabolous
– fantabolous, Commented Apr 28, 2014 at 6:10
Apparently not: see and go vote for this - it's for CLion, but apparently if changed there, it'll also change PyCharm. — drevicko
– drevicko, Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 1:45
Note also that in recent versions, the big red square sends SIGINT, waits one second, then SIGTERM. If your cleanup is quick enough, that may work for you. — drevicko
– drevicko, Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 1:46

Nafiul Islam · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-21 11:57:00Z

23

Unfortunately, there is no simple way to do this. You will need to use psutil and the signal module. For this to work you need to install psutil and the best way to do that is through pip:

pip install psutil

So, lets say we have here, exhibit A:

while True:
    try:
        time.sleep(3)
        print "Zzzz"
        time.sleep(3)
        print("gong!")
    except KeyboardInterrupt as e:
        print "Closed by an Interrupt"
        break

And you're running this in PyCharm. Make sure that the interpreter you're using has psutils installed. You can check:

enter image description here

Make sure you've set your interpreter correctly:

enter image description here

If you haven't installed psutil, you can always do so though the Install button.

Okay then, so now that we have everything set up, lets debug the program:

enter image description here

Now all we have to do is get the process ID, and we can get that at the very start of the program:

enter image description here

So, lets fire up our console, and send a signal:

enter image description here

And if that worked properly, you should see the while loop ending:

enter image description here

You can further streamline the process by adding a function to send an interrupt in the starting script for your console:

enter image description here

Once you're done with all of that, all you need to do is call interrupt(<pid here>) to call a keyboard interrupt on your process.

I hope that answers your question.

answered May 21, 2014 at 11:57

Nafiul Islam

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5 Comments

arbulgazar Over a year ago

thanks! That sure is an answer. Hope Jetbrains will produce more convenient ways for this in their future releases.

Nafiul Islam Over a year ago

Glad you liked it. But this is rather tedious on PyCharm, and I hope this gets fixed quickly.

Pastafarianist Over a year ago

Is there a way to grab the PID in the startup script somehow? In applications which print a lot, you can't really look at the beginning of the console log half an hour after startup.

Nafiul Islam Over a year ago

@Pastafarianist I don't know if there is one, hence this is a bug.

Ofer Over a year ago

Thanks a lot, no one couldn't expect a more detailed answer!

milaniez · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-17 19:03:38Z

13

PyCharm Stop button now sends SIGINT both in debug mode and run mode. If SIGINT does not terminate the program, the Stop button changes its signal to SIGKILL. It also changes its icon to a skull shape:

edited Sep 17, 2016 at 19:03

answered Aug 26, 2016 at 7:02

milaniez

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5 Comments

MikeyE Over a year ago

Any thoughts on how to always send SIGKILL? The little skull appears every time I try to stop debugging, it's quite bothersome.

milaniez Over a year ago

@MikeyE Sending SIGKILL by default is a bad idea. It might leave child processes running and avoid cleanups. Anyhow if you decided that you need it anyhow, you can try closing the program (cross button, i.e, Ctrl+F4).

MikeyE Over a year ago

It might be a bad idea, but that's what PyCharm does by default if the process can't be stopped. In my case, that's literally every time I press the stop button. Maybe sending a different signal would be better. But regardless, how do you do it in PyCharm?

wlnirvana Over a year ago

@milaniez Do you know in which version is this feature introduced? It seems SIGINT is sent on my Mac, but with Windows PyCharm 2017.1.5 the program is terminated immediately in both debug and run mode.

drevicko Over a year ago

Note that there is a one second delay before SIGKILL is sent. If cleanup takes more than that, you're out of luck ): However sending SIGINT to the process (either with a terminal or with psutils as per GamesBraniac's answer) works also.

dvj · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-23 23:32:04Z

12

This is a bug in PyCharm. See: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-4840

Keyboard interrupt is a SIGINT. On unix systems you can either go to the command line and do:

$ kill -INT <pid>

or in python:

import os, signal
os.kill(<pid>,signal.SIGINT)

answered May 23, 2014 at 23:32

dvj

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3 Comments

Mark Over a year ago

The bug for PyCharm was closed as fixed - attempting to get reopened.

David Parks Over a year ago

Nice and simple solution here, this answer needs more upvotes.

drevicko Over a year ago

@Mark note (and go vote for!) youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/… ... for CLion, but apparently if changed there, it'll also change PyCharm.

Comrade Che · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-19 11:41:19Z

10

As mentioned in this comment - Why doesn't this python keyboard interrupt work? (in pycharm):

In recent versions of PyCharm, you can enable Emulate terminal in output console in your Run Configuration - this allows Ctrl + C in the Run console to send a keyboard interrupt.

Tested with PyCharm 2018.3 (Community Edition):

Also this will break tqdm library:

edited Jul 19, 2019 at 11:41

answered Jul 19, 2019 at 9:19

Comrade Che

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Comments

damaZhang · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-27 19:29:19Z

5

I came through this message while searching Pycharm's bug tracking for this issue: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-4840

If you are using version Pycharm 3, this might help, it worked for me.

One of the comments in the tracker: 'I have actually found out that Ctrl+C does eventually stop the running script, but you have to first write a letter into the console while it's running. So click into the console window, hit any key and then press Ctrl-C. In other words, it looks like a problem of GUI frame getting focus.'

answered Jan 27, 2017 at 19:29

damaZhang

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2 Comments

Comrade Che Over a year ago

This doesn't work in PyCharm 2019.3.1 (Community Edition).

user6715080 Over a year ago

This does the trick in scientific mode, version 2020.3.4.

maulzey · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-05 06:16:29Z

0

Sounds silly but this worked for me.

Exit PyCharm and delete .idea folder from finder and startup PyCharm again.

answered May 5, 2022 at 6:16

maulzey

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