Foundations Updated 2026-09 View as Markdown

Bash trap command

It often comes the situations that you want to catch a special signal/interruption/user input in your script to prevent the unpredictables.

It often comes the situations that you want to catch a special signal/interruption/user input in your script to prevent the unpredictables.

Trap is your command to try:

• trap

###Example

#!/bin/bash
# traptest.sh
# notice you cannot make Ctrl-C work in this shell, 
# try with your local one, also remeber to chmod +x 
# your local .sh file so you can execute it!

trap "echo Booh!" SIGINT SIGTERM
echo "it's going to run until you hit Ctrl+Z"
echo "hit Ctrl+C to be blown away!"

while true        
do
    sleep 60       
done

Surely you can substitute the "echo Booh!" with a function:

function booh {
	echo "booh!"
}

and call it in trap:

trap booh SIGINT SIGTERM

Some of the common signal types you can trap:

• SIGINT: user sends an interrupt signal (Ctrl + C)

• SIGQUIT: user sends a quit signal (Ctrl + C)

• SIGFPE: attempted an illegal mathematical operation

You can check out all signal types by entering the following command:

kill -l

Notice the numbers before each signal name, you can use that number to avoid typing long strings in trap:

#2 corresponds to SIGINT and 15 corresponds to SIGTERM
trap booh 2 15

one of the common usage of trap is to do cleanup temporary files:

trap "rm -f folder; exit" 2