UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi

On solaris, when I press Ctrl+S on an XTERM, the window normally freezes. But today on the same machine, the Ctrl+S key results in (i-search) !! I understand that it has got something to do with emacs (may be not). But I do not use emacs at all. Other specific keys including <backspace>, <Ctlr+Q> also perform other-than-usual actions !!. Can someone help?

Balaji

what does stty show?

login to a fresh session, then compare stty there to the old stty output.

The stty shows this

stty -a
speed 9600 baud;
rows = 24; columns = 80; ypixels = 316; xpixels = 499;
csdata ?
eucw 1:0:0:0, scrw 1:0:0:0
intr = ^c; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^u;
eof = ^d; eol = <undef>; eol2 = <undef>; swtch = <undef>;
start = ^q; stop = ^s; susp = ^z; dsusp = ^y;
rprnt = ^r; flush = ^o; werase = ^w; lnext = ^v;
parenb -parodd cs7 -cstopb -hupcl cread -clocal -loblk -crtscts -crtsxoff -parext
-ignbrk brkint ignpar -parmrk -inpck istrip -inlcr -igncr icrnl -iuclc
-ixon ixany -ixoff imaxbel
isig icanon -xcase echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh
-tostop echoctl -echoprt -echoke -defecho -flusho -pendin iexten
opost -olcuc onlcr -ocrnl -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel



I just noticed that just a change of shell from csh to bash caused this problem. But the stty o/p obviously is the same in bash and csh. Is something wrong?

bash uses different keybindings than csh. The bash manual is rather hefty but there is a long section about how to bind, unbind, and rebind keys. Try simply the command "bind -r '\C-s'" to remove the problematic binding. (Incremental search is originally an Emacs feature, yes, but it also exists in e.g. Firefox these days. It simply means that the search results are refined as you type in more input, like e.g. many Ajax web sites work these days.)