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In Python, I wrote the following code to see if I could get my program to not terminate upon Control+C like all those fancy terminal apps such as Vim or Dwarf Fortress.

def getinput():
    x = input('enter something: ')
while True:
    try:
            getinput()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
            pass

Unfortunately, in the Windows console, this script terminates after a few seconds. If I run it in IDLE, it works as expected. Python version is 3.2.1, 3.2 acted the same. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: If I hold down, Control+C, that is.

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    Works for me on Windows console, Python 3.2. What are you expecting to happen and what actually happens? What error is raised? Commented May 23, 2011 at 16:40
  • I edited the answer to be clearer. If I hold down Control+C, in the console it terminates without an error, whereas IDLE performs as expected and keeps displaying 'enter something: '. Commented May 23, 2011 at 17:23

1 Answer 1

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In order to not terminate on Control-C you need to set a signal handler. From the Python doc here

Python installs a small number of signal handlers by default: SIGPIPE is ignored (so write errors on pipes and sockets can be reported as ordinary Python exceptions) and SIGINT is translated into a KeyboardInterrupt exception. All of these can be overridden.

So you would need to install a signal handler to catch the SIGINT signal and do what you want on that.

The behavior with IDLE is probably that they have a handler installed that blocks the application exit.

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1 Comment

The interactive interpreter from Windows' command line works without issues as well, so that all makes sense. Thanks for the help!

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