Ctrl + C in bash
 

I've got the following question:
What happens when I type Ctrl+C while a process is running in bash shell.
I mean - is it the kernel that sends the signal to the process or is it the shell that interprets the key combination and sends the signal to its child process?

This is what you might call a "partially educated guess"....

Anything you do in a terminal is interacting with the shell (eg BASH). In a terminal session, you are in a subshell and this subshell keeps track of what its current process is. ctrl-C says "kill this current process". That results in the subshell telling the kernel to kill the process by number.

I've never tried to read the API for the kernel---I'm sure its published somewhere.

I understand that you mean that it is the shell that sends the signal to the script, am I right?

AFAIK the kernel handles the terminal (screen and keyboard) according to how the terminal is configured. By default this configuration includes setting Ctrl+C to generate the intr signal (interrupt, also known as SIGINT) as shown by Thus, when Ctrl+C is pressed on the keyboard, the kernel sends a SIGINT to all processes that have this particular terminal as their "controlling terminal" (the "process group"?), including the shell and its child processes and their child processes ... .

When a shell is a running a child process it disables SIGINT as explained here until the child process terminates. Thus, when you are running a process from a shell, the process is sent SIGINT and acts on it according to how it is configured; if and when it exits the shell then processes SIGINT according to how it is configured.

That is not what I said----but catkin's explanation looks to be much better

Now, after catkin's explanation, I understand it. Thanks for answering.