What the Settings Mean
There are many special keys on your terminal; the most important are those that per form the erase
, kill
, werase
, rprnt
, lnext
, stop
, start
, intr
, susp
, and eof
functions.
Line Editing Settings
The erase
, kill
, werase
, rprnt
, and lnext
characters let you do simple editing of the current command line. (Some systems do not support werase
or rprnt
.) If you use tcsh, you also have access to a built-in general purpose editor, described in Chapter 7, The tcsh Command-Line Editor.
erase
To backspace over the last character, type the
erase
character. Commonerase
characters areCTRL-H
(also known asBACKSPACE
) orDEL
. Terminals vary in what they provide. There is often aBACKSPACE
key that producesCTRL-H
, and/or aDEL
(orDELETE
orRUBOUT
) key that produces aDEL
character. Some keyboards have only aBACKSPACE
orDEL
key, but allow you to program the key to produce the character you want.kill
The
kill
(line kill) character completely zaps the line you're typing so you can start over. Commonkill
character settings areCTRL-U
orCTRL-X
.werase
The
werase
(word erase) character erases the last word of your command line with one keystroke. When you need to erase several characters, using word erase is often faster than hitting theerase
key over and over. Thewerase
key is usuallyCTRL-W
. (If you're using tcsh,CTRL-W
might not do word erase. TryESC DEL
orESC CTRL-H
instead.)rprnt
The
rprnt
(reprint) character redisplays the command line you're typingâuseful if output ...
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