3 ms·

Another one, not quite as handy but still awesome: ctrl s / ctrl-q. This freezes/unfreezes the terminal output so you can read it, without interrupting your pro

Another one, not quite as handy but still awesome: ctrl s / ctrl-q. This freezes/unfreezes the terminal output so you can read it, without interrupting your program. Useful for very fast walls of text.

TeMPOraL 16d ago
Oh so that is what this is for. I thought ctrl-q / ctrl-s are there as a nasty way to screw with users, who every now and then accidentally press one of these, and find their terminal frozen and no longer visibly reacting to input, for no apparent reason.
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
- zem 16d ago
  there was an old riddle I saw on usenet, "there is a key I use for one of its intended purposes several times a day, but when it stopped working I never missed it. what key was that?". the answer was the caps lock key, one of whose intended purposes was reverting back to normal after accidentally pressing it to go into caps mode.
  - abustamam 15d ago
    I rebind capslock on all my new computers, usually to ctrl or cmd.
    - spider-mario 15d ago
      Mine is usually Esc or, when it’s an option, “Esc when pressed, Ctrl when held”.
- mkehrt 15d ago
  You can disable this misbegotten feature with stty -ixon
- throwaway219450 15d ago
  Ah this is also a fun default feature of Powershell, except it works on mouse click.
- zh3 15d ago
  That's actually XON/XOFF - in the old days when computers could send serial data to your VT100 or whatever faster than it could handle it (and we're talking 9600 baud here), the terminal would send XOFF (ctrl-S) telling the computer to stop sending - then, when the terminal caught up, it would send XON (ctrl-Q) to let the system know it could resume sending. The advantage of doing it this way ('software flow control') is it worked with just TX and RX lines, rather than having to connect up additional wires to indicate when the terminal was busy ('hardware flow control').
  - gosub100 15d ago
    I remember the ole flow control :(rts/cts | xon xoff) from hyperterminal on windows :)
kccqzy 16d ago
It can’t always not interrupt your program. Think about it: after you press Control S to trigger XOFF, the fast output has to be buffered in memory. That memory is certainly not unlimited. There’s no way for the program to keep outputting text. Indeed some programs (including Claude Code, at least a while ago) really don’t like it when you press Control S and let the terminal be frozen for a very long time.
- mkehrt 15d ago
  Interesting; I assumed the write to stdout would just hang for the writing program.
SAI_Peregrinus 16d ago
I remember when the Pause key did that! It's long enough ago that I don't remember which systems did so, and most laptops don't even have a Pause key any more, but it was often very handy for reading fast-moving console output.

TeMPOraL 16d ago

Oh so that is what this is for. I thought ctrl-q / ctrl-s are there as a nasty way to screw with users, who every now and then accidentally press one of these, and find their terminal frozen and no longer visibly reacting to input, for no apparent reason.

deleted 16d ago
[deleted]
zem 16d ago
there was an old riddle I saw on usenet, "there is a key I use for one of its intended purposes several times a day, but when it stopped working I never missed it. what key was that?". the answer was the caps lock key, one of whose intended purposes was reverting back to normal after accidentally pressing it to go into caps mode.
- abustamam 15d ago
  I rebind capslock on all my new computers, usually to ctrl or cmd.
  - spider-mario 15d ago
    Mine is usually Esc or, when it’s an option, “Esc when pressed, Ctrl when held”.
mkehrt 15d ago
You can disable this misbegotten feature with stty -ixon
throwaway219450 15d ago
Ah this is also a fun default feature of Powershell, except it works on mouse click.
zh3 15d ago
That's actually XON/XOFF - in the old days when computers could send serial data to your VT100 or whatever faster than it could handle it (and we're talking 9600 baud here), the terminal would send XOFF (ctrl-S) telling the computer to stop sending - then, when the terminal caught up, it would send XON (ctrl-Q) to let the system know it could resume sending. The advantage of doing it this way ('software flow control') is it worked with just TX and RX lines, rather than having to connect up additional wires to indicate when the terminal was busy ('hardware flow control').
- gosub100 15d ago
  I remember the ole flow control :(rts/cts | xon xoff) from hyperterminal on windows :)

kccqzy 16d ago

It can’t always not interrupt your program. Think about it: after you press Control S to trigger XOFF, the fast output has to be buffered in memory. That memory is certainly not unlimited. There’s no way for the program to keep outputting text. Indeed some programs (including Claude Code, at least a while ago) really don’t like it when you press Control S and let the terminal be frozen for a very long time.

mkehrt 15d ago
Interesting; I assumed the write to stdout would just hang for the writing program.

SAI_Peregrinus 16d ago

I remember when the Pause key did that! It's long enough ago that I don't remember which systems did so, and most laptops don't even have a Pause key any more, but it was often very handy for reading fast-moving console output.