Changing Your Terminal Settings

If you don't like your terminal's settings, use stty to change them:

% stty function char

function is the control function name and char is the associated character. For example, the following command sets the interrupt character to CTRL-C:

% stty intr ^c

You can use either ^c or ^C; stty understands them both to mean CTRL-C.

To make sure your terminal is set up properly each time you log in, put the appropriate stty commands in your ˜/.login file, following any tset or reset commands that might already be in the file. Remember to log in again so that your changes take effect. (For information about your ˜/.login file, see Chapter 4, The Shell Startup Files.)

The next two sections describe how to deal with some common problems involving the erase and line kill characters. If you think your terminal acts funny even after setting it up with stty, look at another user's ˜/.login file or take a look at the stty manual page. You might find something specific to your system that needs to be set.

Problems Typing the # and @ Characters

On many systems, # and @ are the default erase and kill characters. These choices come from the days of hardcopy terminals and are no longer useful. If your ˜/.login file doesn't set erase and kill to something else, you may have a hard time typing # and @. Set the kill character in your .login file as shown below; CTRL-U is a common choice:

stty kill ^u

Set the erase character as described in the next section.

Getting Your Terminal ...

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