---

19.2.6 Special characters

The special characters’ default values vary from system to system. They are set with the syntax ‘name value’, where the names are listed below and the value can be given either literally, in hat notation (‘^c’), or as an integer which may start with ‘0x’ to indicate hexadecimal, ‘0’ to indicate octal, or any other digit to indicate decimal.

For GNU stty, giving a value of ^- or undef disables that special character. (This is incompatible with Ultrix stty, which uses a value of ‘u’ to disable a special character. GNU stty treats a value ‘u’ like any other, namely to set that special character to U.)

‘intr’ ¶

Send an interrupt signal.

‘quit’ ¶

Send a quit signal.

‘erase’ ¶

Erase the last character typed.

‘kill’ ¶

Erase the current line.

‘eof’ ¶

Send an end of file (terminate the input).

‘eol’ ¶

End the line.

‘eol2’ ¶

Alternate character to end the line. Non-POSIX.

‘discard’ ¶

Alternate character to toggle discarding of output. Non-POSIX.

‘swtch’ ¶

Switch to a different shell layer. Non-POSIX.

‘status’ ¶

Send an info signal. Not currently supported on GNU/Linux. Non-POSIX.

‘start’ ¶

Restart the output after stopping it.

‘stop’ ¶

Stop the output.

‘susp’ ¶

Send a terminal stop signal.

‘dsusp’ ¶

Send a terminal stop signal after flushing the input. Non-POSIX.

‘rprnt’ ¶

Redraw the current line. Non-POSIX.

‘werase’ ¶

Erase the last word typed. Non-POSIX.

‘lnext’ ¶

Enter the next character typed literally, even if it is a special character. Non-POSIX.