"^W" is this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-Transmission-Block_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-Transmission-Block_char... In Unix lin

"^W" is this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-Transmission-Block_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-Transmission-Block_char... In Unix line editors it is traditionally used to mean 'erase the previous word'. See also documentation for ASCII (http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/ascii.html http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/ascii.html for example) for origins of ^C, ^D, ^S, etc.