Terminating infinite loop with piped command in scope

Question

I have a very simple unix bash script I am using to execute a command every second. It has the following form:

while : ; do
  cat /proc/`pidof iBrowser.bin`/smaps | awk -f ./myawkscript.awk >> $DIRPATH
  sleep 1
done

The script runs fine, but it won't stop! If I hit ctrl-C while the script is running, the process does not stop, and I get the following error:

cat: can't open '/proc//smaps': No such file or directory

Does anyone know how this can be avoided?

Answer 1

You should consider a trap function. See this and this.

To trap ctrl-c, you'd define a handler, eg:

ctrl_c ()
{
    # Handler for Control + C Trap
    echo ""
    echo "Control + C Caught..."
    exit
}

And then state that you wish to trap it with that handler:

trap ctrl_c SIGINT

Alternatively...

you could run the script in the background by appending &, e.g.

$ ./your_script.sh &

Which would present you with a job id in [square brackets]:

$ ./your_script.sh &
[1] 5183

(in this case 1). When you were done, you could terminate the process with

$ kill %1

Note the percent sign indicates you are referencing a job and not a process id

Answer 2

awk -f ./myawkscript.awk /proc/`pidof iBrowser.bin`/smaps >> $DIRPATH \
  || exit 1

will exit the script if the awk invocation fails, which happens when pidof fails due to an erroneous path. I've taking the liberty of removing your UUOC.