Can you specify a separate trap in a subshell created with ()?

Question

I'm writing a script that starts a subshell to go off and do some work. In a special case, the script needs to tell the subshell to cleanly stop what it's doing and exit early. However, my psuedo-code below doesn't seem to be working. Am I trying the impossible? Is it possible to define a separate trap for signals in a subshell?

#!/bin/bash

function myExitFunction { ... }
trap myExitFunction SIGTERM

while [ 1 ] ; do
    waitForSpecialCondition

    kill -0 $SUBSHELL_PID   # check if subshell is running
    if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then  # and kill it if it is
        kill $SUBSHELL_PID
    fi

    (
    someProcess
    MYOWNCHILD=$!           # save someProcess's pid to kill later if I need to
    trap "kill $MYOWNCHILD" SIGTERM
    ... # do stuff
    ) &
    SUBSHELL_PID=$!

done

Answer 1

It turns out that my problem was not what I really thought it was. Below is a script that behaves like the psuedo-code above. It functions exactly as I expected (although a little contrived in order to be simple), and is a good example of having separate signal traps for a parent and child shell process.

This trap functionality can be demonstrated by just running the script, and exiting by a ctrl-c.

#!/bin/bash

function endEarly {
echo "Terminating early"
if [ ! -z $SUBSHELL_PID ] ; then
    echo "Killing subshell with pid $SUBSHELL_PID"
    kill $SUBSHELL_PID
fi
exit
}

trap endEarly SIGTERM SIGINT

echo "Give me some input"
while [ 1 ] ; do
    read INPUT

    # kill the subshell if it exists and is running
    if [ ! -z $SUBSHELL_PID ] ; then
        kill -0 $SUBSHELL_PID
        if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
            kill $SUBSHELL_PID
        fi
    fi

    echo "Now I'll repeat your input.  Feel free to change it"
    echo "at any time by typing it again and hitting <Enter>"
    {
        (
            while [ 1 ] ; do
                echo "$INPUT"
                sleep 5
            done
        ) &
        CHILD_PID=$!
        trap "kill $CHILD_PID;" SIGTERM SIGINT
        wait $CHILD_PID
    } &
    SUBSHELL_PID=$!
done