Greg Hinkel's UNIX Tip of the Week for April 21, 1996

Clearing (or resetting) your terminal (or window).

Sometimes your terminal (or terminal emulation window) seems to get confused
and "weird" things happen, like the return key doesn't work, or strange
characters appear when you type regular characters, or characters aren't echoed
to the screen, etc.

Here are some things you can do to return your terminal to a usable state.

stty sane
reset

If your "return" key isn't working you can use ^j (where ^j is "control j").
Be sure to press ^j before your command so that you start with a new command,
i.e., 
^jreset^j

Many applications (like vi, mail) will refresh the screen when you enter
^l (control l).  So, if you're in vi and a message blasts across your screen,
you can enter ^l (make sure your not in insert mode).

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Greg Hinkel / (hinkelgc AT ornl.gov)
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