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From: art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How to restore terminal after curses program crashes?
Keywords: curses,cbreak,terminal
Message-ID: <1991Feb16.205808.4337@pilikia.pegasus.com>
Date: 16 Feb 91 20:58:08 GMT
References: <1991Feb13.133332.22320@ousrvr.oulu.fi>
Organization: Pilikia, Honolulu
Lines: 18

In article <1991Feb13.133332.22320@ousrvr.oulu.fi> clegg@tolsun.oulu.fi (Matthew Tran Clegg/VTT) writes:
>I've been working on a program that uses the curses package and
>cbreak mode.  Once in a while, a bug will cause the program to
>crash (for example, with a segmentation fault).  This completely
>unhinges the terminal.  It won't respond to anything anymore,
>except if I press ^C, then the csh prompt will be printed.
>
>(I've noticed sometimes that nethack will crash in this way too, but
>only when the game is better than any I've had in months -- a real bummer.)
>
>Does anyone know how to restore the terminal to a sane state?
>So far, the only thing that has worked for me is the power switch :-).

The best way to handle this is to trap signals in the C program which
uses curses and have the signal handler call endwin() prior to exiting.
-- 
Arthur W. Neilson III		| INET: art@pilikia.pegasus.com
Bank of Hawaii Tech Support	| UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!pilikia!art