If you’ve launched a command from the shell running in the
foreground, and want to kill it immediately, type ^C
. The shell recognizes ^C
as meaning, “terminate the current
foreground command right now.” So if you are displaying a very long
file (say, with the cat
command)
and want to stop, type ^C
:
$ cat bigfile
This is a very long file with many lines. Blah blah blah
blah blah blah blahblahblah ^C
$
To kill a program running in the background, you can bring it
into the foreground with fg
and
then type ^C
, or alternatively, use
the kill
command (see Controlling Processes).
Typing ^C
is not a friendly
way to end a program. If the program has its own way to exit, use that
when possible: see the sidebar for details.
^C
works only with shells. It
will likely have no effect if typed in a window that is not a shell
window. Additionally, some programs are written to “catch” the
^C
and ignore it: an example is the
text editor emacs.
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