4.14. How to use the low-level interrupt facilities

There are two low-level ways to interrupt a running Self program ¹ , Control-C and Control-\. The second way works even if the Self process scheduler is not running. In response to the interrupt, you will see one of two things. If the Self scheduler is not running, you will be returned directly to the VM# prompt. If the scheduler is running, you will be presented with a list of Self processes (the process menu):

Self 9> 100000 * 100000 do: []
^C
    ----------------Interrupt-----------------
    Ready:
        <25> scheduling process 100000 * 100000 do: []
    ------------------------------------------
    Select a process (or q to quit scheduler): 25
    Select <return> for no action
        p to print the stack
        k to kill the process
        b to resume execution of the process in the background
        s to suspend execution of the process
    for process 25: k
    Process 25 killed.
    ------------------------------------------
Self 10>

In this example, the loop was interrupted by typing Control-C, and the process menu was used to abort the process. If the user had typed “q” to quit the scheduler, all current processes would have been aborted along with the scheduler itself:

    ...
    ------------------------------------------
    Select a process (or q to quit scheduler): q
    Scheduler shut down.
    ------------------------------------------
prompt
VM#

The scheduler has been stopped, returning the user to the VM# prompt. The command prompt start restarts the scheduler:

VM# prompt start
Self 11>

Although the VM# prompt can be used to evaluate expressions directly, the scheduler supports much nicer error messages and debugging, so it is usually best to run the scheduler. (The scheduler is started automatically when the default world is created.)

Certain virtual machine operations like garbage collection, reading a snapshot, and compilation cannot be interrupted; interrupts during these operations will be deferred until the operation is complete. As a last resort (e.g., if the system appears to be “hung”), you can force an abort by pressing Control-\ five times in a row.

Footnotes

[1]	Normally, you would use debugging facilities provided in the programming environment.