How to send control+c from a bash script?

bash gnu-screen
ghickman picture ghickman · Apr 26, 2011 · Viewed 132.4k times · Source

I'm starting a number of screens in a bash script, then running django's runserver command in each of them. I'd like to be able to programmatically stop them all as well, which requires me to send Control+c to runserver.

How can I send these keystrokes from my bash script?

Answer

Matthieu Napoli picture Matthieu Napoli · Apr 26, 2011

Ctrl+C sends a SIGINT signal.

kill -INT <pid> sends a SIGINT signal too:

# Terminates the program (like Ctrl+C)
kill -INT 888
# Force kill
kill -9 888

Assuming 888 is your process ID.

Note that kill 888 sends a SIGTERM signal, which is slightly different, but will also ask for the program to stop. So if you know what you are doing (no handler bound to SIGINT in the program), a simple kill is enough.

To get the PID of the last command launched in your script, use $! :

# Launch script in background
./my_script.sh &
# Get its PID
PID=$!
# Wait for 2 seconds
sleep 2
# Kill it
kill $PID

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