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I wish articles like this would say what ^D means. I remember when I was new to Unix it took me a while to realize that I wasn't supposed to type a literal care

I wish articles like this would say what ^D means. I remember when I was new to Unix it took me a while to realize that I wasn't supposed to type a literal caret (^) followed by a D. For reference it means Ctrl+D, unless you you have a strange keyboard from Sun or something.

zeveb 10y ago
^D, Ctrl+D and C-d are all different ways of saying the same thing. There's nothing particularly neutral about Ctrl+D, any more than there is about using the word 'water' to mean the substance of which the oceans are mostly comprised — it's just another dialect's term.
- Rangi42 10y ago
  But Ctrl is easier to figure out from context, since it's a multi-character Googlable symbol that's even printed on the key.
- jrlocke 10y ago
  It's not about neutrality, it's about ease of understanding. For me at least, when speaking about something that can be entered into a keyboard ^D is less obvious than Ctrl+D–I need to press the key labeled "control" to issue the proper command, the key labeled "^" will not suffice.
  - joosters 10y ago
    To be really pedantic (sorry! I'm not complaining about your comment), your keyboard does not have any key labelled 'control', it is always (AFAIK) abbreviated as 'ctrl'. Which is really weird to me, as it's hardly a big word needing abbreviating, and keyboards often have other long words written on the keys ('delete', 'page down', and so on). On top of that, the shortened 'ctrl' is really a terrible abbreviation. It's not obvious that it stands for 'control' and I would guess that most non-techy people would have no idea that it means this word. Plus, it's near to another key with multiple letters ('alt'). The overall effect is that 'ctrl' appears to just be a jumble of letters with some esoteric meaning. A really odd design decision. Why not just put 'control' on the key and be done with it?
    - patrick8 10y ago
      You're incorrect, especially for the typical reader here. A good chunk (maybe not over 50%, but its gotta be close) of the regular readers on this site use Macs. Most Mac keyboards, including the ones on the Macbook Pro, spell it out. Same for most non IBM/IBM-PC compatible keyboards.
      - dancek 10y ago
        I'm typing on a MacBook Pro that has "ctrl". Not sure I've ever seen a Mac keyboard that said "control", but maybe that's because I've mostly seen Finnish keycaps.
        jonknee 10y ago
        Look in the menu bars and you'll only see ^ describing the shortcuts.
        JdeBP 10y ago
        Enjoy this picture of an Apple keyboard that says "control": https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Keyboard.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Keyboard.JPG
      - joosters 10y ago
        I'm typing on a mac keyboard too. It has 'ctrl', 'esc', but 'delete' is written in full.
      - jrlocke 10y ago
        My mid 2014 MBP control key is labeled "control"
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - kaeruct 10y ago
      http://www.clickwithyourmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Control-Key-300x300.png http://www.clickwithyourmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/C...
  - caf 10y ago
    Even then though, why is it obvious that you don't need to press the key labelled + as well?
    - jrlocke 10y ago
      All I know is that in my youth ^ sent me to google befuddled a few times while + never did
- Declanomous 10y ago
  The same argument you made could be used if the author used the unicode codes for Ctrl+D, which I find to be an indication that the argument was a bit weak. The article itself is written in English, and to expand upon your metaphor, tt would be strange to use the term agua to refer to water in an English article. Language is really based around what people use, so using what people know is generally considered good communication. If you use something different it's considered good form to explain why. Each representation you chose is effectively shorthand for the English phrase 'Control + D', just with different stylistic representations. People are much more familiar with Ctrl+D to refer to the key combination of Control and D. Anyways, I had the same issue when I first started using Linux. It probably took me over a year to realize the caret stood for ctrl, and that's only because I accidentally typed it in something that printed the codes literally.
- zippergz 10y ago
  The button on the keyboard literally says "control" or "ctrl" on it. How could that possibly not be easier to figure out than "^" or "C-"?
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    C stands for control.
  - JdeBP 10y ago
    Look at the confusion that surrounds "Strg" for this very same key. Also note that on some keyboards it has the U+2638 character engraved.
- vram22 10y ago
  > ^D, Ctrl+D and C-d are all different ways of saying the same thing. Right, and the classic book The Unix Programming Environment (by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike) uses ctl-d.
tbarbugli 10y ago
Reminds me of how many time I went crazy trying to close a telnet session on memcached ("Escape character is '^]'.") :)
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  And then imagine trying to escape telnet on an international keyboard (Swedish in my case). Telnet actually kind of works, if you press ctrl+altgr+8 (which is one hell of a hand-twister), but many games and GUIs ONLY allow you to press the listed, with no other modifiers. So many games don't even allow you to open the console, because they assume that your key next to 1 is ~, and so don't work for § (next to 1) or altgr+¨ (the layout's ~). Or switch between looking at characters or scancodes depending on the context, and thus work in some cases but not all.
wruza 10y ago
I just tried to search for it as if I didn't know and it was hard. Maybe wikipedia should describe that ^ is common representation among first lines, not in details section. Also macOS (former osx) uses this symbol everywhere: http://www.macinstruct.com/images/command.png http://www.macinstruct.com/images/command.png
- EnigmaticLion 10y ago
  Yes, but it is so annoying and confusing that these symbols are not printed on the actual keyboard. Looking at the keyboard doesn't help much when I try to press a shortcut I just saw in the menu.
whatever_dude 10y ago
^D is the old school way of writing it; you'd see it so much you'd only ever once be confused about it, generally in the very first few days you were learning to use a computer. It's never used anymore, I suppose, except for the old school people who still have enough muscular memory built up to write it that way. I know I do; I learned it from some computer magazine in the 80's and have a hard time letting go.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  It's used when talking about text editors a fair bit.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    More than just text editors, it is used system wide in OS X menus to describe the available shortcuts.
- breadbox 10y ago
  I dunno if I'd say it was never used anymore. Try running `cat` (to bring up a basic termainal input) and type various control keys. Anything that isn't interpreted by the tty is probably displayed using caret notation.
- saghm 10y ago
  > It's never used anymore, I suppose, except for the old school people who still have enough muscular memory built up to write it that way. I know I do; I learned it from some computer magazine in the 80's and have a hard time letting go. I was born after the 80s, and I use that shorthand (although I suppose this probably says more about me than it does about the shorthand itself). I didn't even understand the original comment until I read through the whole thing because I mentally read it as "Ctrl+D"

zeveb 10y ago

^D, Ctrl+D and C-d are all different ways of saying the same thing. There's nothing particularly neutral about Ctrl+D, any more than there is about using the word 'water' to mean the substance of which the oceans are mostly comprised — it's just another dialect's term.

Rangi42 10y ago
But Ctrl is easier to figure out from context, since it's a multi-character Googlable symbol that's even printed on the key.
jrlocke 10y ago
It's not about neutrality, it's about ease of understanding. For me at least, when speaking about something that can be entered into a keyboard ^D is less obvious than Ctrl+D–I need to press the key labeled "control" to issue the proper command, the key labeled "^" will not suffice.
- joosters 10y ago
  To be really pedantic (sorry! I'm not complaining about your comment), your keyboard does not have any key labelled 'control', it is always (AFAIK) abbreviated as 'ctrl'. Which is really weird to me, as it's hardly a big word needing abbreviating, and keyboards often have other long words written on the keys ('delete', 'page down', and so on). On top of that, the shortened 'ctrl' is really a terrible abbreviation. It's not obvious that it stands for 'control' and I would guess that most non-techy people would have no idea that it means this word. Plus, it's near to another key with multiple letters ('alt'). The overall effect is that 'ctrl' appears to just be a jumble of letters with some esoteric meaning. A really odd design decision. Why not just put 'control' on the key and be done with it?
  - patrick8 10y ago
    You're incorrect, especially for the typical reader here. A good chunk (maybe not over 50%, but its gotta be close) of the regular readers on this site use Macs. Most Mac keyboards, including the ones on the Macbook Pro, spell it out. Same for most non IBM/IBM-PC compatible keyboards.
    - dancek 10y ago
      I'm typing on a MacBook Pro that has "ctrl". Not sure I've ever seen a Mac keyboard that said "control", but maybe that's because I've mostly seen Finnish keycaps.
      - jonknee 10y ago
        Look in the menu bars and you'll only see ^ describing the shortcuts.
      - JdeBP 10y ago
        Enjoy this picture of an Apple keyboard that says "control": https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Keyboard.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Keyboard.JPG
    - joosters 10y ago
      I'm typing on a mac keyboard too. It has 'ctrl', 'esc', but 'delete' is written in full.
    - jrlocke 10y ago
      My mid 2014 MBP control key is labeled "control"
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaeruct 10y ago
    http://www.clickwithyourmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Control-Key-300x300.png http://www.clickwithyourmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/C...
- caf 10y ago
  Even then though, why is it obvious that you don't need to press the key labelled + as well?
  - jrlocke 10y ago
    All I know is that in my youth ^ sent me to google befuddled a few times while + never did
Declanomous 10y ago
The same argument you made could be used if the author used the unicode codes for Ctrl+D, which I find to be an indication that the argument was a bit weak. The article itself is written in English, and to expand upon your metaphor, tt would be strange to use the term agua to refer to water in an English article. Language is really based around what people use, so using what people know is generally considered good communication. If you use something different it's considered good form to explain why. Each representation you chose is effectively shorthand for the English phrase 'Control + D', just with different stylistic representations. People are much more familiar with Ctrl+D to refer to the key combination of Control and D. Anyways, I had the same issue when I first started using Linux. It probably took me over a year to realize the caret stood for ctrl, and that's only because I accidentally typed it in something that printed the codes literally.
zippergz 10y ago
The button on the keyboard literally says "control" or "ctrl" on it. How could that possibly not be easier to figure out than "^" or "C-"?
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  C stands for control.
- JdeBP 10y ago
  Look at the confusion that surrounds "Strg" for this very same key. Also note that on some keyboards it has the U+2638 character engraved.
vram22 10y ago
> ^D, Ctrl+D and C-d are all different ways of saying the same thing. Right, and the classic book The Unix Programming Environment (by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike) uses ctl-d.

tbarbugli 10y ago

Reminds me of how many time I went crazy trying to close a telnet session on memcached ("Escape character is '^]'.") :)

Nullabillity 10y ago
And then imagine trying to escape telnet on an international keyboard (Swedish in my case). Telnet actually kind of works, if you press ctrl+altgr+8 (which is one hell of a hand-twister), but many games and GUIs ONLY allow you to press the listed, with no other modifiers. So many games don't even allow you to open the console, because they assume that your key next to 1 is ~, and so don't work for § (next to 1) or altgr+¨ (the layout's ~). Or switch between looking at characters or scancodes depending on the context, and thus work in some cases but not all.

wruza 10y ago

I just tried to search for it as if I didn't know and it was hard. Maybe wikipedia should describe that ^ is common representation among first lines, not in details section. Also macOS (former osx) uses this symbol everywhere: http://www.macinstruct.com/images/command.png http://www.macinstruct.com/images/command.png

EnigmaticLion 10y ago
Yes, but it is so annoying and confusing that these symbols are not printed on the actual keyboard. Looking at the keyboard doesn't help much when I try to press a shortcut I just saw in the menu.

whatever_dude 10y ago

^D is the old school way of writing it; you'd see it so much you'd only ever once be confused about it, generally in the very first few days you were learning to use a computer. It's never used anymore, I suppose, except for the old school people who still have enough muscular memory built up to write it that way. I know I do; I learned it from some computer magazine in the 80's and have a hard time letting go.

vertex-four 10y ago
It's used when talking about text editors a fair bit.
- jonknee 10y ago
  More than just text editors, it is used system wide in OS X menus to describe the available shortcuts.
breadbox 10y ago
I dunno if I'd say it was never used anymore. Try running `cat` (to bring up a basic termainal input) and type various control keys. Anything that isn't interpreted by the tty is probably displayed using caret notation.
saghm 10y ago
> It's never used anymore, I suppose, except for the old school people who still have enough muscular memory built up to write it that way. I know I do; I learned it from some computer magazine in the 80's and have a hard time letting go. I was born after the 80s, and I use that shorthand (although I suppose this probably says more about me than it does about the shorthand itself). I didn't even understand the original comment until I read through the whole thing because I mentally read it as "Ctrl+D"