Re: lynx-dev z (was Re: Timeout parameter?)

[David Woolley]

> 
> Also, even though _in theory_ I don't like programs purposely not allowing
> me to ^C out of a program(*), I sort of wish ^C were also a generic "cancel"
> command.

You (and Lynx) misunderstand ^C (stty intr, SIGINT).  The purpose is to
return to interactive command mode, not to return to a shell prompt.
If you need to force kill a program under unix, you should use
^\ (stty quit, SIGQUIT), which will also force a core dump in circumstances
allow, and as the only time that you should need to do this is when the
program has crashed (otherwise get to command mode then do qy).

E.g. SIGINT in vi or less will abort a search, but leave you still in the
program.

I can't guarantee that the resolver library cleans up properly in this
case, so you might get a resource leak, or worse.  With luck, though,
if you returned from the interrupt handler after setting a flag, it
would just return with an interrupted system call status.

I believe that the DOS (and I think this thread was triggered by an
MS system) ^C handling is much more dirty and might not be adaptable.

I haven't checked for conflicts between ^\ and Lynx, although there is
a conflict for the other common setting of stty intr (DEL).