Propagate Ctrl+C to executed processes

[rgl]

After executing:

.\createprocess.exe /w /systemtoken c:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe

And pressing the Ctrl+C (or Ctrl+Break) key combination, only the first createprocess.exe process is terminated, the processes running as SYSTEM are still left running.

Would it be possible to propagate the key combination to the other processes? Maybe using SetConsoleCtrlHandler/GenerateConsoleCtrlEvent.

PS Ah, the signal is reaching all the processes (including the ones running as SYSTEM). Maybe createprocess.exe should ignore the signal instead? I mean, when using /w, createprocess.exe should wait for the actual application to exit despite receiving the signal?

[cubiclesoft]

There's no way to automatically determine whether an application is going to handle either event correctly or ignore them altogether or some combination of the two. A Command Prompt will consume the events but not exit, Windows GUI subsystem applications usually don't have support, some console applications will notice the events and attempt a clean shutdown which might take several seconds but can be forced to shutdown by repeating the event a second time, but most console apps will simply exit since they don't handle the events at all. I think there need to be a few reasonable options that define how to handle console events with sensible defaults - that is, /w is an insufficient indicator.

I mostly use createprocess-win.exe, which is actually a GUI application, to suppress console windows from appearing in the first place. Specifically it is used to get the benefits of standard handle pipes of console apps without flashing a bunch of console windows on the desktop and thus avoids having to deal with Ctrl+C/Ctrl+Break altogether.

The SetConsoleCtrlHandler() and HandlerRoutine documentation is extensive and has many edge cases including three additional events that originate from different sources and are asynchronous to equivalent events in the Windows GUI subsystem. In short, any implementation will be a lot more complex than you might think it will be.