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Miscellaneous commands

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

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 ommited 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.

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

Zombie

Command: zombie [key]

Per default windows are removed from the window list as soon as the window's process (e.g. shell) exits. When a key is specified to the zombie command a `dead' windows will remain in the list until it is selected and this key is pressed or the kill command is issued.

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