For a while now I’ve known about the rather annoying Linux shell freezing that happens when you press Ctrl-S. At first, it seems like a connection drop-out if it’s remote (I use the Linux shell a lot, via PuTTY on Windows), but it took me a few months to realise that it was when I pressed a key. A few months later, I learnt it was caused by Ctrl-S, when I meant to press Ctrl-D (EOF).
Apparently, this is intended behaviour – a scroll lock of sorts. Ctrl-S again doesn’t solve it, but Ctrl-Q will.
So, here’s a few other keyboard shortcuts you may or may not find useful – not all of these may work on every unix/linux variant.
| Ctrl-A | Moves the cursor to the beginning of the line. See Ctrl-E. |
|---|---|
| Ctrl-B | Moves the cursor backward one character. See Ctrl-F. |
| Ctrl-C | SIGINT – interrupts (cancels) |
| Ctrl-D | EOF – end of file character, marks the end of user input. If used on an interactive shell, will log you out. If used on a STDIN stream, will mark the end of the stream so it stops expecting input from you.(These are essentially different angles on the same thing) |
| Ctrl-E | Moves the cursor to the end of the line. See Ctrl-A. |
| Ctrl-F | Moves the cursor forward one character. See Ctrl-B. |
| Ctrl-H | Backspace |
| Ctrl-L | Clears the screen (like the clear command) |
| Ctrl-N | Next item in history. See Ctrl-P |
| Ctrl-P | Previous item in history. See Ctrl-N |
| Ctrl-Q | XON – Resumes screen output. See Ctrl-S. |
| Ctrl-R | Reverse history search. |
| Ctrl-S | XOFF – Suspends screen output. See Ctrl-Q. |
| Ctrl-U | Delete line |
| Ctrl-W | Delete last word |
| Ctrl-Z | SIGTSTP – suspend a process. Can be resumed with either fg or bg |
Thanks to http://www.computerhope.com/ushort.htm and http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=19672 for some of the info here.