IDL catches certain operating system signals including SIGINT, which occurs when the user types the interrupt character (usually Control-C). When the interpreter detects the interrupt character, it sets an internal flag which causes execution of the program to stop at the next sequence statement. The interpreter clears this variable every time it is invoked, and checks to see if it has been set before it executes each statement. This means that when the user presses the interrupt character, the current statement must complete before the interpreter checks the value of the variable and halts execution.
Typical statements do not take long to complete, so this delay is not noticeable. However, some system routines take a long time to complete, and the user can be fooled by the long delay into thinking that IDL is ignoring the interrupt. While the occasional long delay can be annoying, this method of handling interrupts is the only way to maintain acceptable performance in the usual case where no interrupt is pending. Therefore, it is the responsibility of system routines that take a long time to complete to check the value of this internal variable and to clean up and return if SIGINT is seen. IDL’s Input/Output and FFT routines, among others, do this.
IDL_BailOut()
The IDL_BailOut() function is used to sense or set the state of IDL’s internal interrupt flag. It returns TRUE if the keyboard interrupt character has been typed, otherwise FALSE.
int IDL_BailOut(int stop)
where:
stop
Set to FALSE to sense the state of the keyboard interrupt flag without changing its value. Set to TRUE to set the keyboard interrupt flag.