On Sunday 07 May 2006 12:50, Brandon Peirce wrote:
> On Tue, 2 May 2006 15:50:18 +0200, Allard Welter <deleted in body> 
wrote:
> >Does anyone know how to get a (console) terminal to reset by itself
> >after accidentally cat'ing a binary file. I do this regularly and
> > have gotten used to issuing a 'setterm -reset' in binary font. It
> > would please me though if did not have to do this each time.
>
> It's usually better to avoid dumping a binary file to the terminal
> than to clean up the result ;-)
> I'm not sure if you are doing this because of carelessness (aka
> "going too fast!")
> or because you're not sure of the tools to use. Here are a few tips:
> * To avoid the problem you describe, I have got into the habit of
> checking unknown files
> with file(1) before trying to display them.
> * If it is binary and you want to search for text, try the strings(1)
> command from binutils package.
> * Less(1) is also safe for displaying binary files as long as you
> don't use the -r option.

Thanks, but it's sloppiness on my part. I do it with heads and tails as 
well sometimes.

> Still, despite all the above, sometimes shit happens.
> In that case `setterm -reset' is the correct solution. You might be
> interested to add the something like this to your .bashrc file:
>     alias rt='setterm -reset'
> Then you can recover your teminal with 3 keystrokes: <r> <t> <Enter>

It doesn't happen that often, perhaps I exaggerated a bit. A couple of 
times per year maybe. It still irritates me though. The reason I asked 
is because an xterm resets itself (or doesn't get its fonts through the 
same mechanism as a console) so I was wondering what happens 
differently. aliases are for things that happen daily. Doing the 
'wrong' things is for the rest of my life.

Cheers,
Allard.

PS. I use a valid email address so that I get notified if my message has 
been blocked or something similar. Having it quoted in the body of the 
message was not really what I had in mind.
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