Miscellaneous commands

The commands described here do not fit well under any of the other categories.

• At: Execute a command at other displays or windows.
• Break: Send a break signal to the window.
• Debug: Suppress/allow debugging output.
• License: Display the disclaimer page.
• Nethack: Use nethack-like error messages.
• Number: Change the current window's number.
• Silence: Notify on inactivity.
• Time: Display the time and load average.
• Version: Display the version of screen.
• Zombie: Keep dead windows.
• Printcmd: Set command for VT100 printer port emulation.
• Sorendition: Change the text highlighting method.

At

Command: at [identifier][#|*|%] command [args]

(none)
Execute a command at other displays or windows as if it had been entered there. At changes the context (the `current window' or `current display' setting) of the command. If the first parameter describes a non-unique context, the command will be executed multiple times. If the first parameter is of the form `identifier*' then identifier is matched against user names. The command is executed once for each display of the selected user(s). If the first parameter is of the form `identifier%' identifier is matched against displays. Displays are named after the ttys they attach. The prefix `/dev/' or `/dev/tty' may be omitted from the identifier. If identifier has a # or nothing appended it is matched against window numbers and titles. Omitting an identifier in front of the #, * or % character selects all users, displays or windows because a prefix-match is performed. Note that on the affected display(s) a short message will describe what happened. Caution: Permission is checked for the owners or the affected display(s), not for the initiator of the `at' command.

Break

Command: break [duration]

(none)
Send a break signal for duration*0.25 seconds to this window. Most useful if a character device is attached to the window rather than a shell process.

Command: pow_break

(none)
Reopen the window's terminal line and send a break condition.

Debug

Command: debug [on|off]

(none)
Turns runtime debugging on or off. If screen has been compiled with option -DDEBUG debugging is available and is turned on per default. Note that this command only affects debugging output from the main `SCREEN' process.

License

Command: license

(none)
Display the disclaimer page. This is done whenever screen is started without options, which should be often enough.

Nethack

Command: nethack state

(none)
Changes the kind of error messages used by screen. When you are familiar with the game nethack, you may enjoy the nethack-style messages which will often blur the facts a little, but are much funnier to read. Anyway, standard messages often tend to be unclear as well.

This option is only available if screen was compiled with the NETHACK flag defined (see section Installation). The default setting is then determined by the presence of the environment variable $NETHACKOPTIONS.

Number

Command: number [n]

(C-a N)
Change the current window's number. If the given number n is already used by another window, both windows exchange their numbers. If no argument is specified, the current window number (and title) is shown.

Silence

Command: silence [state|sec]

(none)
Toggles silence monitoring of windows. When silence is turned on and an affected window is switched into the background, you will receive the silence notification message in the status line after a specified period of inactivity (silence). The default timeout can be changed with the silencewait command or by specifying a number of seconds instead of on or off. Silence is initially off for all windows.

Command: silencewait seconds

(none)
Define the time that all windows monitored for silence should wait before displaying a message. Default is 30 seconds.

Time

Command: time

(C-a t, C-a C-t)
Uses the message line to display the time of day, the host name, and the load averages over 1, 5, and 15 minutes (if this is available on your system). For window-specific information use info (see section Info).

Version

Command: version

(C-a v)
Display the version and modification date in the message line.

Zombie

Command: zombie [keyx]

Command: defzombie [keyx]

(none)
Per default windows are removed from the window list as soon as the windows process (e.g. shell) exits. When a string of two keys is specified to the zombie command, `dead' windows will remain in the list. The kill kommand may be used to remove the window. Pressing the first key in the dead window has the same effect. Pressing the second key, however, screen will attempt to resurrect the window. The process that was initially running in the window will be launched again. Calling zombie without parameters will clear the zombie setting, thus making windows disappear when the process terminates.

As the zombie setting is affected globally for all windows, this command should only be called defzombie. Until we need this as a per window setting, the commands zombie and defzombie are synonymous.

Printcmd

Command: printcmd [cmd]

(none)
If cmd is not an empty string, screen will not use the terminal capabilities po/pf for printing if it detects an ansi print sequence ESC [ 5 i, but pipe the output into cmd. This should normally be a command like `lpr' or `cat > /tmp/scrprint'. Printcmd without an argument displays the current setting. The ansi sequence ESC \ ends printing and closes the pipe.

Warning: Be careful with this command! If other user have write access to your terminal, they will be able to fire off print commands.

Sorendition

Command: sorendition [attr [color]]

(none)
Change the way screen does highlighting for text marking and printing messages. attr is a hexadecimal number and describes the attributes (inverse, underline, ...) the text will get. color is a 2 digit number and changes the forground/background of the highlighted text. Some knowledge of screen's internal character representation is needed to make the characters appear in the desired way. The default is currently `10 99' (standout, default colors).