How do I capture SIGINT in Python?

user_57458 0
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I'm working on a python script that starts several processes and database connections. Every now and then I want to kill the script with a Ctrl+C signal, and I'd like to do some cleanup.

In Perl I'd do this:

$SIG{'INT'} = 'exit_gracefully';

sub exit_gracefully {
    print "Caught ^C \n";
    exit (0);
}

How do I do the analogue of this in Python?

signals controls python
12 Answers

Register your handler with signal.signal like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import signal
import sys

def signal_handler(sig, frame):
    print('You pressed Ctrl+C!')
    sys.exit(0)

signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, signal_handler)
print('Press Ctrl+C')
signal.pause()

Code adapted from here.

More documentation on signal can be found here.  

Matt_J_185280

You can treat it like an exception (KeyboardInterrupt), like any other. Make a new file and run it from your shell with the following contents to see what I mean:

import time, sys

x = 1
while True:
    try:
        print x
        time.sleep(.3)
        x += 1
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print "Bye"
        sys.exit()
user_914520

You can handle CTRL+C by catching the KeyboardInterrupt exception. You can implement any clean-up code in the exception handler.

Jay_18910

From Python's documentation:

import signal
import time

def handler(signum, frame):
    print 'Here you go'

signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler)

time.sleep(10) # Press Ctrl+c here
user_1228510

If you want to ensure that your cleanup process finishes I would add on to Matt J's answer by using a SIG_IGN so that further SIGINT are ignored which will prevent your cleanup from being interrupted.

import signal
import sys

def signal_handler(signum, frame):
    signal.signal(signum, signal.SIG_IGN) # ignore additional signals
    cleanup() # give your process a chance to clean up
    sys.exit(0)

signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, signal_handler) # register the signal with the signal handler first
do_stuff()
user_74873350

You can use the functions in Python's built-in signal module to set up signal handlers in python. Specifically the signal.signal(signalnum, handler) function is used to register the handler function for signal signalnum.

user_1204440

thanks for existing answers, but added signal.getsignal()

import signal

# store default handler of signal.SIGINT
default_handler = signal.getsignal(signal.SIGINT)
catch_count = 0

def handler(signum, frame):
    global default_handler, catch_count
    catch_count += 1
    print ('wait:', catch_count)
    if catch_count > 3:
        # recover handler for signal.SIGINT
        signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, default_handler)
        print('expecting KeyboardInterrupt')

signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler)
print('Press Ctrl+c here')

while True:
    pass
user_65285230

Personally, I couldn't use try/except KeyboardInterrupt because I was using standard socket (IPC) mode which is blocking. So the SIGINT was cueued, but came only after receiving data on the socket.

Setting a signal handler behaves the same.

On the other hand, this only works for an actual terminal. Other starting environments might not accept Ctrl+C, or pre-handle the signal.

Also, there are "Exceptions" and "BaseExceptions" in Python, which differ in the sense that interpreter needs to exit cleanly itself, so some exceptions have a higher priority than others (Exceptions is derived from BaseException)

user_31728790
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