No, by default, most signals cause an immediate, abnormal exit of your program.
However, you can easily change the default behavior for most signals.
This code shows how to make a signal exit your program normally, including calling all the usual destructors:
#include <iostream>
#include <signal.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <cstring>
#include <atomic>
std::atomic<bool> quit(false); // signal flag
void got_signal(int)
{
// Signal handler function.
// Set the flag and return.
// Never do real work inside this function.
// See also: man 7 signal-safety
quit.store(true);
}
class Foo
{
public:
~Foo() { std::cout << "destructor\n"; }
};
int main(void)
{
struct sigaction sa;
memset( &sa, 0, sizeof(sa) );
sa.sa_handler = got_signal;
sigfillset(&sa.sa_mask);
sigaction(SIGINT,&sa,NULL);
Foo foo; // needs destruction before exit
while (true)
{
// do real work here...
sleep(1);
if( quit.load() ) break; // exit normally after SIGINT
}
return 0;
}
If you run this program and press control-C, you should see the word “destructor” printed.
Be aware that your signal handler function (got_signal) should rarely do any work, other than setting a flag and returning quietly, unless you really know what you are doing. See also: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/signal-safety.7.html
Most signals are catchable as shown above, but not SIGKILL, you have no control over it because SIGKILL is a last-ditch method for killing a runaway process, and not SIGSTOP which allows a user to freeze a process cold. Note that you can catch SIGTSTP (control-Z) if desired, but you don’t need to if your only interest in signals is destructor behavior, because eventually after a control-Z the process will be woken up, will continue running, and will exit normally with all the destructors in effect.