CHAPTER 3 Getting Started

3.3 Control Keys

Control keys are used to perform special functions on the command line or within an editor. You type these by holding down the Control key and some other key simultaneously. This is usually represented as ^Key. Control-S would be written as ^S. With control keys upper and lower case are the same, so ^S is the same as ^s. This particular example is a stop signal and tells the terminal to stop accepting input. It will remain that way until you type a start signal, ^Q.

Control-U is normally the "line-kill" signal for your terminal. When typed it erases the entire input line.

In the vi editor you can type a control key into your text file by first typing ^V followed by the control character desired, so to type ^H into a document type ^V^H.

Introduction to Unix - 14 AUG 1996

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