signal handling

[David Young]

	A nice feature for a Java interpreter, I think, would be that it
sent a ThreadDeath to all of its threads and finalize()'d all of its
objects before exiting upon receiving any signal besides SIGKILL.
That way a program would have an opportunity to clean up after itself
and die gracefully when you pressed ^C or rebooted your computer.
Another possibility is that a single ^C could begin a graceful
shutdown, and a second ^C would cancel that and kill the interpreter.

	I am surprised that neither the JDK interpreter nor Kaffe
feature a "soft kill". I would have thought that Sun would have
defined that as a standard feature for a Java compliant interpreter.
Is there any reason that a "soft kill" feature is infeasible or just
plain bad?

Dave


-- 
"The source of U.S. leadership is its focus upon the PC and the Internet,
capital equipment that empowers and enhances individual mind and creativity,
rather than on the TV and games that degrade their users. But because most
Americans fail to comprehend the meaning of the moment, they could lose
not only technological dominance and prosperity but also a unique hope for a
better world." -- George Gilder