This is probably a POSIX-only feature, but I might be wrong - you probably won't see signals at all on other systems. If you do happen to be in a Unixy environment -- Linux, Solaris, *BSD, et al. -- the following should probably do what you want:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use POSIX qw{:signal_h};

if (system('for a in 1 2 3 4; do echo $a>>/tmp/foobar; echo tick $a; s
+leep 5; done')
        != 0)
{
        my $sig_if_any = $? & 127;
        my $return_value = $? >> 8;
        print "child died: rv=$return_value, signal=$sig_if_any\n";
        if (defined($sig_if_any) && ($sig_if_any == SIGINT))
        {
                print "child was interrupted\n";
                # ... do something appropriate ...
        }
        # ... cleanup ...
}       
else
{
        # ... do something with /tmp/foobar
}       


## ... run, and hit ctrl-c while it ticks...

[download]

The usual caveats about interpolating Perl variables into the strings passed to system() apply, of course :). Any monks more cross-platformy than me care to comment on the applicability of $? on other systems?

In reply to Re: Re: SIGINT in system() with shell metachars by andrewc
in thread SIGINT in system() with shell metachars by cadphile

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.