Control modes

Control mode flags affect hardware characteristics associated with the terminal. This corresponds to the c_cflag in the termios structure.

parenb (-parenb)

Enable (disable) parity generation and detection.

parodd (-parodd)

Select odd (even) parity.

cs5 cs6 cs7 cs8

Select character size, if possible.

number

Set terminal baud rate to the number given, if possible. If the baud rate is set to zero, modem control is no longer asserted.

ispeed number

Set terminal input baud rate to the number given, if possible. If the input baud rate is set to zero, the input baud rate is set to the value of the output baud rate.

ospeed number

Set terminal output baud rate to the number given, if possible. If the output baud rate is set to zero, modem control is no longer asserted.

speed number

This sets both ispeed and ospeed to number.

hupcl (-hupcl)

Stop asserting modem control (do not stop asserting modem control) on last close.

hup (-hup)

Same as hupcl (-hupcl).

cstopb (-cstopb)

Use two (one) stop bits per character.

cread (-cread)

Enable (disable) the receiver.

clocal (-clocal)

Assume a line without (with) modem control.

crtscts (-crtscts)

Enable (disable) RTS/CTS flow control.

Input modes

This corresponds to the c_iflag in the termios structure.

ignbrk (-ignbrk)

Ignore (do not ignore) break on input.

brkint (-brkint)

Signal (do not signal) INTR on break.

ignpar (-ignpar)

Ignore (do not ignore) parity errors.

parmrk (-parmrk)

Mark (do not mark) parity errors.

inpck (-inpck)

Enable (disable) input parity checking.

istrip (-istrip)

Strip (do not strip) input characters to seven bits.

inlcr (-inlcr)

Map (do not map) NL to CR on input.

igncr (-igncr)

Ignore (do not ignore) CR on input.

icrnl (-icrnl)

Map (do not map) CR to NL on input.

iuclc (-iuclc)

Translate (do not translate) upper case to lower case on input.

ixon (-ixon)

Enable (disable) START/STOP output control. Output from the system is stopped when the system receives STOP and started when the system receives START, or if ixany is set, any character restarts output.

ixoff (-ixoff)

Request that the system send (not send) START/STOP characters when the input queue is nearly empty/full.

ixany (-ixany)

Allow any character (allow only START) to restart output.

imaxbel (-imaxbel)

The system imposes a limit of MAX_INPUT (currently 255) characters in the input queue. If imaxbel is set and the input queue limit has been reached, subsequent input causes the system to send an ASCII BEL character to the output queue (the terminal beeps at you). Otherwise, if imaxbel is unset and the input queue is full, the next input character causes the entire input and output queues to be discarded.

Output modes

This corresponds to the c_oflag of the termios structure.

opost (-opost)

Post-process output (do not post-process output; ignore all other output modes).

onlcr (-onlcr)

Map (do not map) NL to CR-NL on output.

ocrnl (-ocrnl)

Translate (do not translate) carriage return to newline on output.

onocr (-onocr)

Carriage return is not output (is output) at column 0.

onlret (-onlret)

Newline performs (does not perform) carriage return on output.

olcuc (-olcuc)

Translate (do not translate) lower case to upper case on output.

oxtabs (-oxtabs)

Expand (do not expand) tabs to spaces on output.

onoeot (-onoeot)

Discard (do not discard) EOFs on output.

Local modes

Local mode flags (lflags) affect various and sundry characteristics of terminal processing. Historically the term "local" pertained to new job control features implemented by Jim Kulp on a PDP 11/70 at IIASA. Later the driver ran on the first VAX at Evans Hall, UC Berkeley, where the job control details were greatly modified but the structure definitions and names remained essentially unchanged. The second interpretation of the ‘l’ in lflag is “line discipline flag” which corresponds to the c_lflag of the termios structure.

isig (-isig)

Enable (disable) the checking of characters against the special control characters INTR, QUIT, and SUSP.

icanon (-icanon)

Enable (disable) canonical input (ERASE and KILL processing).

iexten (-iexten)

Enable (disable) any implementation defined special control characters not currently controlled by icanon, isig, or ixon.

echo (-echo)

Echo back (do not echo back) every character typed.

echoe (-echoe)

The ERASE character shall (shall not) visually erase the last character in the current line from the display, if possible.

echok (-echok)

Echo (do not echo) NL after KILL character.

echoke (-echoke)

The KILL character shall (shall not) visually erase the current line from the display, if possible.

echonl (-echonl)

Echo (do not echo) NL, even if echo is disabled.

echoctl (-echoctl)

If echoctl is set, echo control characters as ‘^X’. Otherwise control characters echo as themselves.

echoprt (-echoprt)

For printing terminals. If set, echo erased characters backwards within ‘\’ and ‘/’. Otherwise, disable this feature.

noflsh (-noflsh)

Disable (enable) flush after INTR, QUIT, SUSP.

tostop (-tostop)

Send (do not send) SIGTTOU for background output. This causes background jobs to stop if they attempt terminal output.

altwerase (-altwerase)

Use (do not use) an alternate word erase algorithm when processing WERASE characters. This alternate algorithm considers sequences of alphanumeric/underscores as words. It also skips the first preceding character in its classification (as a convenience since the one preceding character could have been erased with simply an ERASE character).

mdmbuf (-mdmbuf)

If set, flow control output based on condition of Carrier Detect. Otherwise writes return an error if Carrier Detect is low (and Carrier is not being ignored with the CLOCAL flag).

flusho (-flusho)

Indicates output is (is not) being discarded.

pendin (-pendin)

Indicates input is (is not) pending after a switch from non-canonical to canonical mode and will be re-input when a read becomes pending or more input arrives.

xcase (-xcase)

Upper and lower case is (is not) handled canonically on input and output with iuclc and olcuc.

Control characters

control-character string

Set control-character to string. If string is a single character, the control character is set to that character. If string is the two character sequence ‘^-’ or the string “undef” the control character is disabled (i.e. set to {_POSIX_VDISABLE}).

Recognized control-characters:

Control	Subscript	Description
character
eof	VEOF	EOF character
eol	VEOL	EOL character
eol2	VEOL2	EOL2 character
erase	VERASE	ERASE character
werase	VWERASE	WERASE character
intr	VINTR	INTR character
kill	VKILL	KILL character
quit	VQUIT	QUIT character
susp	VSUSP	SUSP character
start	VSTART	START character
stop	VSTOP	STOP character
dsusp	VDSUSP	DSUSP character
lnext	VLNEXT	LNEXT character
reprint	VREPRINT	REPRINT character
status	VSTATUS	STATUS character

min number

 

time number

Set the value of min or time to number. MIN and TIME are used in non-canonical mode input processing (-icanon).

Combination modes

saved settings

Set the current terminal characteristics to the saved settings produced by the -g option.

evenp or parity

Enable parenb and cs7; disable parodd.

oddp

Enable parenb, cs7, and parodd.

-parity, -evenp, -oddp

Disable parenb and set cs8.

nl (-nl)

Enable (disable) icrnl. In addition, -nl unsets inlcr and igncr.

ek

Reset ERASE and KILL characters back to system defaults.

sane

Resets all modes to reasonable values for interactive terminal use.

tty

Set the line discipline to the standard terminal line discipline TTYDISC.

crt (-crt)

Set (disable) all modes suitable for a CRT display device.

kerninfo (-kerninfo)

Enable (disable) the system generated status line associated with processing a STATUS character (usually set to ‘^T’). The status line consists of the system load average, the current command name, its process ID, the event the process is waiting on (or the status of the process), the user and system times, percent CPU, and current memory usage.

columns number

The terminal size is recorded as having number columns.

cols number

This is an alias for columns.

rows number

The terminal size is recorded as having number rows.

dec

Set modes suitable for users of Digital Equipment Corporation systems (ERASE, KILL, and INTR characters are set to ^?, ^U, and ^C; ixany is disabled, and crt is enabled).

extproc (-extproc)

If set, this flag indicates that some amount of terminal processing is being performed by either the terminal hardware or by the remote side connected to a pty.

raw (-raw)

If set, change the modes of the terminal so that no input or output processing is performed. If unset, change the modes of the terminal to some reasonable state that performs input and output processing. Note that since the terminal driver no longer has a single RAW bit, it is not possible to intuit what flags were set prior to setting raw. This means that unsetting raw may not put back all the setting that were previously in effect. To set the terminal into a raw state and then accurately restore it, the following shell code is recommended:

save_state=$(stty -g)
stty raw
...
stty "$save_state"

size

The size of the terminal is printed as two numbers on a single line, first rows, then columns.

Compatibility modes

These modes remain for compatibility with the previous version of the stty command.

all

Reports all the terminal modes as with stty -a except that the control characters are printed in a columnar format.

everything

Same as all.

cooked

Same as sane.

cbreak

If set, enables brkint, ixon, imaxbel, opost, isig, iexten, and -icanon. If unset, same as sane.

new

Same as tty.

old

Same as tty.

newcrt (-newcrt)

Same as crt.

pass8

The converse of parity.

tandem (-tandem)

Same as ixoff.

decctlq (-decctlq)

The converse of ixany.

crterase (-crterase)

Same as echoe.

crtbs (-crtbs)

Same as echoe.

crtkill (-crtkill)

Same as echoke.

ctlecho (-ctlecho)

Same as echoctl.

prterase (-prterase)

Same as echoprt.

lcase (-lcase)

Same as iuclc, olcuc and xcase.

litout (-litout)

The converse of opost.

tabs (-tabs)

The converse of oxtabs.

brk value

Same as the control character eol.

flush value

Same as the control character discard.

rprnt value

Same as the control character reprint.

Control operations

These operations are not modes, but rather commands to be performed by the tty layer.

ostart

Performs a “start output” operation, as normally done by an incoming START character when ixon is set.

ostop

Performs a “stop output” operation, as normally done by an incoming STOP character when ixon is set.