Executive summary: What dpuu proposes is a mess, once you get it working.

Gory Details

Aside from the obvious limitation that there is absolutely no way to handle the signal other than by termination, it's tricky to get this to work.

Consider the following example: 

END { kill 'INT', $$ }
sub DESTROY { print "@{$_[0]}\n"; exit(14); }
my $a = bless [1];
my $b = bless [2, $a];

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This prints "2 main=ARRAY(0x80f01b4)" (or some such). Note that $a is not being destructed. Apparently, perl loses track of the fact that its reference count is going to zero before it calls the END block, and since the END block kills the process, there is no opportunity for mark-and-sweep.

If we don't worry about propagating the status properly, then we still have problems. Consider the following: 

sub DESTROY { print "@{$_[0]}\n"; exit(14); }
my $a = bless [1];
my $b = bless [2, $a];
my $c = bless [3, $b];

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which prints: 
3 main=ARRAY(0x80f00c4)
1

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It appears that exiting during mark-and-sweep terminates garbage collection.

Just dying once doesn't work either: 

my $cleaning_up;
sub DESTROY {
    print "DESTROY @{$_[0]}\n";
    my $id = $_[0][0];
    @{$_[0]} = ();
    print "CLEAN $id\n";
    return if $cleaning_up++;
    exit(14);
}
my $a = bless [1];
my $b = bless [2, $a];
my $c = bless [3, $b];

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which prints (under Perl 5.6.1 -- perl5.8.2 is OK): 
DESTROY 3 main=ARRAY(0x80f00c4)
DESTROY 2 main=ARRAY(0x80f01b4)
DESTROY 1
CLEAN 1

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The problem here is that the exit at the bottom of the call stack obliterates the stack up through destroying $c.

We can fix these problems like this (brace yourself): 

use POSIX;
{
    # Fork off a parent whose role is to convert the exit status.
    my $pid = fork;
    defined($pid) or die "Fork failed because $!";
    if($pid) {
        {
            # TBD: This really ought to be `sub { kill $_[0], $pid }'
            # instead of "IGNORE", but that does bad things on
            # ctrl-C, probably because the child gets the signal
            # twice.
            local $SIG{INT} = "IGNORE";
            waitpid($pid,0);
        }
        kill &POSIX::WTERMSIG($?), $$
          if &POSIX::WIFSIGNALED($?);
        my $status = &POSIX::WEXITSTATUS($?);
        if(0x80 < $status && $status < 0xC0) {
            kill $status - 0x80, $$;
        }
        POSIX::_exit($status);
    }
}
my $termsig;
my $cleaning_up;
our $in_dtor;
sub DESTROY {
    # NOTE: Signals that arrive in this method but outside the eval
    # are still a problem.
    my $id = $_[0][0];
    local ($@, $?);
    eval {
        my $sub_dtor = $in_dtor;
        local $in_dtor = 1;
        print "DESTROY @{$_[0]}\n";
        my $id = $_[0][0];
        @{$_[0]} = ();
        print "CLEAN $id\n";
    };
    warn "Failed to deallocate $id: $@" if $@;
    return unless $termsig;
    return if $in_dtor || $cleaning_up++;
    exit(14);
}
eval {
    local $SIG{INT} = sub { $termsig = $_[0]; die "SIG$_[0]\n" };
    {
        my $a = bless [1];
        my $b = bless [2, $a];
        my $c = bless [3, $b];
    }
    0; # Must be here to make handler go out of scope last!
};
if($@) {
    die $@ unless $@ =~ /^SIG(\w+)$/;
}
END {
    if($termsig) {
        use Config;
        my @sigs = split(' ', $Config{sig_name});
        my $i=0;
        $i++ while $sigs[$i] ne $termsig;
        $? = 0x80 + $i;
    }
}

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In reply to Re^2: Propagating a Signal from DESTROY by topnerd
in thread Propagating a Signal from DESTROY by topnerd

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