On 2024-12-18 06:58, Chet Ramey wrote: >> With signals other than SIGALRM, the code has to be careful; if it >> ever happens that the signal is delivered without the trap being >> in place, Bash will die. > > Same with SIGALRM, too.
OK, that is my mistake. These steps do terminate Bash: trap - ALRM # make sure we have no trap for SIGALRM kill -ALRM $$ Sorry for contributing to the despicable spread of misinformation. What remains is the question why I somehow cannot get my stuff to work with a different signal like SIGUSR1 or SIGVTALRM. Bash will not take them while it's sitting in the call to readline. It will act on pending signals once the command line is submitted. However, an ALRM trap can go off during readline operation. This is how the clock display in Basta is kept up-to-date even when you're just sitting at the prompt doing nothing.
