I was able to use ctrl-j in bash (on ubuntu over ssh) and ctrl-j didn't trigger an execution. I just did something simple like: cat ./test.txt && # hit ctrl

I was able to use ctrl-j in bash (on ubuntu over ssh) and ctrl-j didn't trigger an execution. I just did something simple like: cat ./test.txt && # hit ctrl-j here > less ./test.txt # the ">" was generated by bash automatically So, it probably depends on what you're doing ...