## 4.6. Useful Keys and How to Get Them to Work

When you type a command, pressing the Backspace key should remove the last character. Ctrl-U should delete the whole line.[20] When you have finished entering a command, and it is executing, Ctrl-C should abort it, and Ctrl-Z should suspend it. (When you want to resume the program, enter `fg` for "foreground.")

> [20]Ctrl-U means hold down the Control key and press `u`.

If any of these keys fail to work, your terminal is not configured correctly for some reason. You can fix it through the `stty` command. Use the syntax:

>     stty function key

where function is what you want to do, and key is the key that you press. Specify a control key by putting a circumflex (^) in front of the key.

Here is a set of sample commands to set up the functions described earlier:

>     $ stty erase ^H
>     $ stty kill ^U
>     $ stty intr ^C
>     $ stty susp ^Z

The first control key shown, `^H`, represents the ASCII code generated by the Backspace key.

By the way, you can generate a listing of your current terminal settings by entering `stty -a`. But that doesn't mean you can understand the output: `stty` is a complicated command with many uses, some of which require a lot of knowledge about terminals.

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