A Guide To The Terminal, Console, and Shell

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!"From the Telegraph to the Video Terminal
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#"The Telegraph
#"The Teleprinter, Teletype, or TTY
#"Computers and TTYs
#"Video Terminals
1 of 41
!"Unix System in AT&T 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
A Guide to the Terminal, Console, and Shell https://thevaluable.dev/guide-terminal-shell-console/
#"The Birth of Unix

☰ MENU
#"The Shell
!"Types of Terminal Emulators
#"Virtual Consoles (TTY)
#"Pseudoterminals, or PTY
!"How Terminal Emulators Work
#"The TTY core
#"The Line Discipline
#"TTY Drivers
!"Customizing the Terminal Emulator
#"Line Discipline and TTY Drivers Settings
!"A Selection of Terminal Emulators
!"This Beast of Terminal Unraveled
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#Tools #Mouseless 27 Dec 2022
A Guide to the Terminal,

Console, and Shell
2 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
☰ MENU
This is a boring morning for every employee of

MegaCorpMoneyMaker, the famous E-commerce. You are no ex-
ception: only dragging yourself out of your bed to crawl to your of-
fice required some superhuman efforts.
Dave, your colleague developer, loudly explain to an intern what

she should do to connect to one of the company’s Kubernetes clus-
ter. “So, now, you need to open your virtual shell for your terminal
to request information from your console using Bash. Does it make
sense?”.
Mesmerized by the nonsensical discourse of your colleague, you be-

gin to wonder what’s the deep purpose of your life. Suddenly, this
question found a clear answer: you see Davina, another of your col-
league, stand up, take a Banjo from nowhere, and begin to sing a
poem, like a troubadour lightening the ignorance of some middle-
age peasants.
3 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
“ Once upon a time, as far as I can tell, There was the console,
the terminal, and the shell. Let me tell you the story of these di- ☰ MENU
vine tools, For you to stop looking like ignorant fools.
Everybody gathers around Davina to hear her story. Her music

sounds ancient and magical, and they soon have the feeling to slide
in an ancient time…
Why does Davina want her colleagues to know more about the vir-
tual consoles, the terminal, and the shell?
I don’t know any developer who doesn’t use a terminal, a shell, and
some CLIs. I definitely use them all the time. They are the central
building bricks of my Mouseless Development Environment.
So, since it’s so useful, let’s look a bit deeper what’s this shell, con-
sole, and terminal. More precisely, we’ll see, in this article:
!"The legacy of physical teletypes in Unix-based systems.

!"What are virtual consoles (TTY).
!"What are pseudoterminals.
!"What’s the shell.
!"How to customize a terminal.
This article is the result of a reader asking me to write about the ter-
minal. Don’t hesitate to subscribe to the newsletter to ask me what
you’d like to read in The Valuable Dev!
In this article, I’ll mostly speak about terminals in the context of a

Linux-based system; that said, they can also be applied to Unix-
4 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
based systems at large (including macOS).

☰ MENU
Strap on in the time machine, this will be a wild ride. The terminal
carry a lot of baggage from devices of forgotten eras, so let’s come
back in time!
From the Telegraph to the

Video Terminal
Internet wasn’t only the result of some military project in the 70s.
As far as history can remember, humanity was always compelled to
send long distance messages. Many different cultures tried different
ways to do so: smoke, pigeons, or even drum beats.
One of the biggest accomplishment in this quest was the invention

of the telegraph. That’s our first stop to understand why the Unix
terminal is an intertwined set of different ideas glued together.
The Telegraph
The history of the telegraph goes back from the 17th and 18th cen-
tury. At that time, there were already some ways to send telegraphs
on long distances! The technology jumped forward in the 18th cen-
tury: during the french revolution, there was suddenly an urgent
need for the telegraph; after all, the French monarchy (and the
king’s head) was on the line. That’s why the telegraph expanded
quickly in France first, and then in Europe.
To send a telegraph, you needed two persons on each side of the line
(emission and reception): the operators. At the time, it was not pos-
5 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
sible to send messages in plain text, so the operators had to encrypt

them; for example in the famous Morse system, but not only. ☰ MENU
Let’s say that you’re a respectable citizen from Berlin in the 19th
century, and you want to send a telegraph to your best friend in
Paris. You would need to go to the telegraph office in Berlin, and
give your message (in plain text) to the operator there. He would en-
crypt it, and send it to Paris. There, a second operator would decode
your message, write it somewhere, and give it to Dave, your best
friend.
Berlin Paris
Emitter Operator 1 encrypt & send Operator 2 decrypt Receptor
There were many types of telegraph invented throughout the 18th

and 19th century. The most famous was the electric telegraph, but
there were many other variants too; it eventually led to the invention
of the telephone.
For example, there were also the optical telegram, the helograph
telegram, even wireless telegraphy was a thing.
The Teleprinter, Teletype, or TTY

Throughout the decades, the traffic of telegrams increased world-
wide. Many were thinking about possible solutions to automate the
whole process. The need for trained operators able to encrypt and
decrypt messages were getting bigger and bigger, leading to the in-
vention of the teleprinter.
6 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
☰ MENU
A Creed Model 7 teleprinter, 1931 - source
As you can see, it was a physical device composed of a keyboard

and a printer. With a teleprinter, you could type your message in
plain text; it would then be encrypted automatically, and sent. On
the other side, a teletype could decrypt the message, and print it.
Berlin Paris
Emitter Teleprinter 1 codify & send Teleprinter 2 decode Receptor
With the adoption of the teleprinter, the Morse system wasn’t the
best code to send messages anymore; it wasn’t really machine
friendly. That’s where the Baudot code entered the chat: each char-
acter had the same length, making it easier for the teleprinters to
handle. It could also encrypt more characters! Five bit sequential of
binary code, allowing 32 (2^5) possible characters in your mes-
sages. Even better: a “shift” key (or FIGS, for “figure shift”) was al-
lowing numbers and special characters in the messages for the first
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time.
☰ MENU
The Baudot code had also some early control characters (CR). For
example, let’s say that you wanted to send a message, but you made
a typo: you could use the “DEL” code to say that you wanted the
character before it to be deleted. When the message was received,
the teleprinter in charge of printing back the message wouldn’t print
the “DEL” code, but instead it would skip the character just before
it. That’s also why control characters are also called non-printable
characters.
In 1925, the Baudot code was improved, and became the Murray
code. More control characters were included: the carriage return for
example (CR), to move the carriage (the “cursor” of the teleprinter)
back to the left margin of the same line. You also had the line feed
(LF), to advance the carriage to the same column of the next line.
These control characters are still used today. We’ll come back to
them below in this article.
Fast-forward to the early 1930: a new network, composed of

teleprinters, was invented in Europe (more specifically in
Germany): the telex. AT&T launched its own version in the US in
1931. It was the cheaper way at the time to send long-distance tele-
grams. The speed of the network was measured in baud; in Europe,
it was of 50 bauds, which was around 66 words per minute.
And guess what: you can still display the speed in baud of your ter-
minal. It doesn’t mean anything anymore, but it shows the roots of
the terminal coming back to the teleprinter.
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In 1961, the American Standard Association created a new code for

teleprinters, called the ASCII code. It’s a 7 bits codes, allowing to
☰ MENU
send bigger messages than with the Baudot (or the Murray) code,
even including the luxe of lowercase and uppercase letters.
It was a great step toward standardisation, too. Until then, many dif-
ferent codes to encrypt messages were still used, even if some more
than others. With the ASCII code, teleprinters in the US were using
the same set of characters to send messages.
That said, the control characters themselves weren’t properly stan-

dardized. Two different teletypes could use different characters for
the same control.
The telegram began to decline as soon as 1920, mostly because of

the telephone. It’s estimated that, at its pick, in 1929, there were
about 200 millions telegrams sent worldwide! Journalists never
stopped using them until the 90s, when the Internet came into the
picture.
Last thing: the teleprinter is the official name for the device.
Teletype was a major brand producing teleprinters, that’s why “tele-
type” became a synonym of “teleprinter”. The abbreviation of
t ele ty pe is TTY.
Computers and TTYs

In the middle of the 50s, there were already a bunch of computers
available. These mainframes were massive computers taking a lot of
space, many of them built by IBM. At that time, teletypes were all
over the world, so it was only natural to use them to send messages
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to a computer.
☰ MENU
Early computers could be categorized in two types:
!"Batch computers (IBM and Univac computers).

!"Interactive computers (like the Bendix G-15, the Librascope
LGP-30, or the IBM 610).
To run a bunch (a batch) of programs together on batch computers,

you needed to:
1. Type your code using a teletype on punch cards.

2. Feed the different punch cards to the mainframe computer as
input.
3. Get the output on a punch card.
4. Insert this output into a tabulating machine, to decode it in a
human-readable format.
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☰ MENU
IBM mainframes with a teleprinter - source
The rise of interactive computers changed this workflow. You could

then directly send your input to the machine using a teletype. More
specifically, you needed to:
1. Type your input on a teletype, which would be printed on pa-

per for you to see what you were typing.
2. The teletype was also sending the characters (including the
control characters) to the computer.
3. The computer was sending back the output to the teletype,
which was also printed on paper (or punch cards).
A Bendix G-15 - source
These teletypes were connected to the computer using a serial port.

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Two wires were necessary: one to send the data to the computer, an-
other one to receive it. ☰ MENU
The ASR-33 (introduced in 1963) was a widely used teletype at the

time. It was one of the first teletype using the ASCII standard,
which was also the common encryption used by more and more
“minicomputers” to transmit information. These computers are not
mini by today standards, but they were smaller than massive main-
frames.
An ASR-33 - source
As we saw, there were a handful of control characters available to

do some “non-printable” actions. Now that teletypes were interact-
ing with a computer, the users needed more control characters. The
ASCII introduced the ESC key, and “control sequences” were in-
vented. Instead of a single key for performing an action, a sequence
of key were used, often prefixed with the ESC character. That’s why
12 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
control sequences are also called escape sequences. This prefix was
not a standard however, but widely used nonetheless. ☰ MENU
It’s interesting to note that, at the beginning, the interactive comput-

ers would only allow one user to connect and interact with it. In
1959, the development of time-sharing allowed multiprogramming.
Later, the concept of time-sharing shifted: it meant then that multi-
ple users could interact to a single computer at the same time.
We’ve here the origin of the command-line interface: a text-only in-

terface allowing users to communicate with a computer. Everything
was printed, input as well as output.
What if we replace the sheet of paper with a screen?
Video Terminals
In 1960, IBM began to experiment with a new way to interact with
computers, the “glass teletype”, a terminal with screen. The video
terminal was born.
It was similar to a teletype. Instead of printing the input and output

(which was slow and, due to the mechanical nature of teletypes,
quite loud), a video terminal would display everything on a screen.
This video terminal was still an external device to the computer it-
self, including both a screen and a keyboard. Like most invention, it
was very expensive at the beginning, limiting its adoption. The
price dropped in the middle of the 70s, and the success of Video ter-
minal rose.
13 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
☰ MENU
A DEC VT100 video terminal - source
The video terminals were also called “console”, or simply “termi-

nal”.
The DEC VT100 (for V ideo T erminal) was one of the most popular
choice. Released in 1978, it was one of the first video terminal sup-
porting a new set of escape sequences, the ANSI escape codes.
When connected to a computer, this terminal was called a “control-
ling terminal”, because it was controlling the computer.
Unix System in AT&T

Now that we have video terminals to use on minicomputers, what
did the programmers in the 70s did with them?
The Birth of Unix

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In 1970, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson develop the UNIX op-
erating system on a DEC PDP-11, a popular minicomputer series☰ MENU
at
the time. It was an interactive computer, easier to program than the
competitors. It influenced not only modern CPUs (like the Intel x87)
but also other operating systems, like the CP/M, the ancestor of MS-
DOS (the base of Windows for many years).
Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie on a PDP-11 - source
Unix was created for AT&T needs, and their creators were influ-
enced by the long time they spent on teletypes.
With Unix, almost everything is represented by a file. External de-

vices are no exception: when you were connecting a teletype (or a
video terminal) to a machine running Unix, it would represent the
15 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
device with a file prefixed by “tty”. This file was an interface be-
tween the external terminal and the computer. ☰ MENU
For example, in a multi-user context, if three teletypes were con-

nected to your computer, you would have the file /dev/tty1 as-
signed to the first one, /dev/tty2 to the second one, and /dev/tty3
to the third one.
The file /dev/tty0 always represent the current terminal.
We can now transmit commands to the computer thanks to these ex-

ternal devices. But how the computer knows what to do with them?
It’s what the shell is good for.
The Shell
When you think about it, teleprinters and video terminals were quite
dumb:
1. They take your sweet input, and display it.

2. They pass it to the computer.
3. Some program, running on the computer, interprets the input,
and send back the output.
4. They display the output to your impressed face.
But what program are we talking about, here? What can interpret
our commands? That’s where the shell shines.
Imagine that you’re an AT&T employee working with Dennis

16 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
Ritchie. You’re writing ls on your video terminal, and send it to

the computer by hitting the control character Carriage Return (the☰ MENU
ENTER key on our modern keyboards). The shell, running on the

computer, receives the command, interprets it, and understands that
you want to execute the program ls . As a result, it might send
some system call to the kernel (we’ll come back to that soon), cre-
ates a new process ls (a process is simply a program being exe-
cuted), and send back the output of this process to the terminal to
display it.
The shell can also interpret a list of commands described in a shell

script.
Here’s what you always wanted to see: a fancy 3D animation fol-

lowed by Brian Kernighan explaining casually what the kernel and
the shell are to one another, with the keyboard of a fancy video ter-
minal on his laps, the feet on the desk. That’s charisma right there.
If you can, watch the whole video. It’s awesome.
Types of Terminal
Emulators
As time went on, with the development of OS (Operating Systems)
like Unix and CP/M, the video terminals began to be abstracted
away.
With computers getting smaller and smaller, more and more “per-
sonal” (the first widely adopted microcomputer was the Apple II in
17 of 41
1977), why needing a physical external device when you can emu- 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
late the system in software?

☰ MENU
That’s where the TTY began to be emulated.
When we speak about terminal nowadays, we think about a piece of

software which allows us to write some commands. This terminal is
an emulation, trying to recreate, in software, the video terminal.
That’s why we speak about terminal emulators. This emulation is
still called the TTY device, somehow making teletypes still part of
our lives.
We can distinguish two families of terminal emulators: virtual con-

soles and pseudoterminals.
Virtual Consoles (TTY)

Before graphical interfaces took over the computer world, virtual
consoles were the only ways to interact with these OSes growing in
popularity. A virtual console is a terminal emulator running in the
kernel.
Imagine that you just threw away your big video terminal. You only
have a screen and a keyboard attached to a computer now, and this
time the computer take your input from your keyboard, and display
the output on the screen. No need of a video terminal anymore!
Now, when you start your computer, you’re first greeted with a lo-
gin screen. You log in with your favorite user, and then the shell
will display a prompt, inviting you to enter some commands. You
can type these commands in your virtual console and press ENTER ,
to send them to the shell, where they will be interpreted. The output
18 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
appears on your screen. You can even start other processes, like
your favorite editor, which is obviously Vim. ☰ MENU
But, without a video terminal, what allows us to type our com-

mands, see them on a screen, and pass them to the shell (or any of
its child process), and only when we type ENTER ? What is giving
our output back? Your virtual console of course! Even if you threw
away your actual physical console, it’s still there, doing the same
job as before.
When you log in a virtual console, a shell process will be attached

to the output of the terminal emulator (specifically the file represent-
ing the terminal, something like /dev/tty , as we already saw). The
shell will give you a prompt, and everything you type will go di-
rectly to the TTY device.
The virtual console itself runs in the kernel, and your shell as well
as its child processes run in user land. Wait, what?
Kernel and User Land

Let’s go on a tangent here. If you didn’t know, there are two “spa-
ces” where programs can run: the kernel and user land (also called
user space).
Part of the kernel’s job is to ensure that no program will mess up

with the hardware, and also that one program can’t access the mem-
ory of another one. To ensure this level of security, most programs
you run as a user will be a process in user land.
If the process needs to ask the kernel to use some hardware (like
19 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
writing on the hard disk, or using the RAM, for example), it will
send a system call to the kernel. The kernel will receive the system
☰ MENU
call, enable some more protections (on the CPU for example), and it
will try to handle what the process wants.
Linux Virtual Consoles

Virtual consoles fell out of fashion when desktops were being im-
plemented in most common OS (but in very different ways). No
need to have a text-based interface anymore: with desktops, we
have now fancy windows, icons, status bars, and the like.
As a result, not many OSes give us the chance to interact with vir-
tual consoles nowadays; but Linux-based systems still have them.
The Linux kernel was developed with multi-users in mind from the
beginning, giving us multiple virtual consoles where different users
could log in in parallel.
When you launch some Linux distribution (like Arch Linux, by the
way) without any desktop installed, you’ll be greeted with a logging
screen.
1. First, a program called “getty” runs.

2. The process “getty” gets a TTY; this process is then replaced
with another one called “login”, to give the user a login prompt.
3. After logging in, the user will get write permissions on the file
representing the TTY ( /dev/tty<tty_number> ).
4. The file /etc/passwd will be read to decide what shell to run
for this specific user. The shell will then replaces the login
process.
20 of 41 5. The shell will display a prompt for the user to type com- 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
mands.
☰ MENU
TODO screenshot of a loggin screen
If you have a desktop (like Gnome, KDE, i3, or whatever else),

there will be a display server (like X or wayland) called after getting
the TTY (or after the login process starts), which will in turn display
the desktop. The TTY itself still runs under the hood.
I was saying that Linux-based systems allow us to have multiple

virtual consoles. With most Linux distros, if you’re in a virtual con-
sole already, you can use the ALT key with one of the F-key (like
F1, F2… up to F6, or more) to switch between them. If you’re al-
ready running a desktop on top of one of your TTY, you can use
CTRL+ALT followed by one of the F-key.
On Linux, the files /dev/tty1 to /dev/tty63 represents the differ-

ent virtual consoles you can access (you might not be able to open
all of them, depending on your configuration). You can actually play
with that: if you’re logged with the same user on the TTY 1 and 2
(to have write permissions on the /dev/tty files), you can send
some data from the TTY 1 to the TTY 2 by running:
echo "I'm the first TTY" > /dev/tty2
If you switch to the second virtual console, you’ll see your input
displayed on the screen.
If you try to read the files themselves (using cat for example), you
21 of 41
won’t see anything in there; they’re just used as interface to pass 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
data from terminals to processes, and from processes to terminals.

☰ MENU
You can also use the CLI chvt to switch to different virtual con-
soles: chvt 2 will switch to the second virtual console for example.
Even nowadays, virtual consoles can be handy for different reasons:
1. If your graphical desktop freeze or crash, you can switch to

another virtual console to debug the problem.
2. If your graphical desktop crash at startup, you can also switch
to a virtual console and try to solve the problem.
3. If you access a remote server (or an embedded device) with-
out any graphical interface, you’ll only have the virtual console
to work with; better knowing how it works in these cases!
The virtual console is considered as the controlling terminal of all

the process you can run in it (including the shell). You can display
the controlling terminals for each process by using one of the fol-
lowing command:
!" tty - Show the actual controlling terminal.

!" who - Show all the users logged in a controlling terminal.
!" ps -eF (with GNU ps), ps aux (with BSD ps) - Show the
controlling terminals of all processes (if any); look at the “TTY”
column.
Not all group of processes have a controlling terminal. For example,

daemons started when the OS boots don’t need any terminal to con-
trol them; they operate on their own.
22 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
Here’s a diagram showing the first virtual console of a Linux-based

system. We can imagine that you’ve typed “vim” in the first virtual
☰ MENU
console, followed by the ENTER key:
Kernel User land
User input (vim) Terminal (/dev/tty1) shell vim
If virtual consoles are not as popular as before, what kind of termi-

nals we run in our windows, on our comfy desktops?
Pseudoterminals, or PTY
A virtual console is running in the kernel. A pseudoterminal (or
“PTY”) is a terminal running in user land. Any terminal you launch
from a graphical interface (like a desktop) is a PTY.
How does it work?
Let’s imagine that you open three terminal emulators in your fa-
vorite graphical environment, like xterm for example. On Linux-
based systems, it will first open the file /dev/ptmx , which will then
open two other files:
1. A file descriptor for the PTY master (or “PTM”).

2. A file /dev/pts/<pty_number> for the PTY slave (or “PTS”).
The <number> is incremented each time you launch another
pseudoterminal.
To come back to our example, the third pseudoterminal you open

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will be represented by the PTS file /dev/pts/3 on Linux-based sys-

tems. The PTM is only a file descriptor (a number in a table); you
☰ MENU
won’t find it in the filesystem.
Then, a shell will be attached to the PTS, receiving its input from
the PTS file. When you’re trying to run some commands in your
pseudoterminal, the input will first flow from the PTM to the PTS,
and then from the PTS to the shell. The shell’s output will take the
same path back.
Here’s a diagram summarizing the process:
24 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
User input ☰ MENU
User land
Terminal emulator (xterm)
Kernel
PTM (file descriptor)
PTS (/dev/pt2)
shell
process 1 process 2
A pseudoterminal is similar to a virtual console, with two important

differences:
1. The terminal is running in user land, not in the kernel.

2. Instead of having one file ( /dev/tty ) representing the whole
TTY device, you have two (the PTM and the PTS).
Coming back to physical teletypes, we’ve seen above that they were
connected by a pair of wires to a computer. You can see the master
25 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
file “PTM” as the emulation of the physical pair of wire connecting

the physical terminal to the computer. Here, it connects the terminal
☰ MENU
in user land to the kernel. The slave file “PTS” has the same role as
the TTY ( /dev/tty<tty_number> ) file of a virtual console: it’s an
interface between the terminal and the different processes using our
commands, like the shell.
Again, you can use the CLI tty in your terminal emulator to see
what PTS file you’re writing to. You can also try to write to another
PTS (for example echo "hello third PTY" > /dev/pts/3 ), you’ll
see in the third pseudoterminal what you’ve written.
How Terminal Emulators

Work
Now that we’ve seen the basics of teletypes, consoles, virtual con-
soles, shells, and the pseudoterminals, let’s look at how terminal
emulators work in general.
We’ve represented the TTY device as a black box until now, but
there’s more to it. We can divide it in three parts: the TTY core, the
line discipline, and the TTY drivers.
The TTY core

The TTY core responsibility is to get the user input and pass it to
the line discipline. You have the choice between multiple line disci-
plines; the one by default normally handle input from a terminal,
but some others can manage mouse or whatever else can be plugged
to a serial port.
26 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
The Line Discipline ☰ MENU
Thanks to the TTY core, you can write some commands in your ter-
minal. These commands are then send to the line discipline, which
can also intercept control characters and escape sequences. For ex-
ample, as we already observed, the control sequence “^[[3~” will be
send to the line discipline if I hit the key “DEL” in my terminal; as a
result, the line discipline will get back your input with a character
deleted. This control sequence is also called escape sequence, be-
cause the character ^[ represents the ESC key.
We were saying above that a terminal is quite dumb. The line disci-
pline makes it a bit smarter, because it already interprets some of
your input. It’s a very basic editor, if you will.
The line discipline can be in different modes:
!"The canonical mode: the input is processed when a line is ter-

minated by a carriage return (a control character), created when
you hit ENTER , or a line feed. At that point, the command will be
passed to the process in the foreground.
!"The noncanonical mode: each character is directly sent to the
line discipline and the TTY drivers, and to the foreground
process. No need of line feed anymore.
!"The cooked mode: the terminal “cooks” (transform) the input
you give to the terminal, as well as the potential output from the
processes attached. It’s basically the canonical mode will all the
default control characters and control sequences enabled.
!"The raw mode: the line discipline doesn’t do anything any-
more. It just passes whatever you give to the TTY drivers. It’s
basically the noncanonical mode with many control characters
27 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
and control sequences disabled.

☰ MENU
Many applications (like Vim for example) use the “noncanonical”

mode to get all the characters you type directly, instead of waiting
for you to hit ENTER to finally receive them. That’s how Vim can
display the characters you’re typing one by one.
With early computers, you didn’t have much choice: you had to use
the line discipline. Its buffer was useful to store characters, instead
of using the very limited RAM. But nowadays, with our crazy com-
puters, it’s not a problem anymore.
TTY Drivers
When the line discipline is done processing your input, your com-
mand (or individual characters, depending on the mode you’re in) is
then sent to the TTY drivers. They will interact with the hardware
directly (the role of a driver), and also pass the different characters
to the processes, like the shell.
The possible output goes through the TTY drivers again, then back
to the line discipline, which might convert some other control se-
quences. For example, on Unix systems, it converts the line feeds
(LF) from the output to the combo carriage return/line feed
(CR/LF), simply because the line feed only advance the carriage re-
turn to the same column on the next line, not on the first column on
the next line.
We’ll see how to change the behavior of the line discipline in the
next section. For now, here’s a diagram for a whole TTY device:
28 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
TTY Device
☰ MENU
hardware
User input TTY core Line discipline TTY driver
shell
It’s more or less the same for a pseudoterminal, except that the line
discipline sits on top of the PTS.
Customizing the Terminal

Emulator
Now that we have a high level view on what the TTY device is do-
ing, let’s see how to customize your terminal experience.
Line Discipline and TTY Drivers

Settings
We can actually configure our line discipline and TTY drivers with
the command stty . Let’s try to run the following in a shell:
stty -a
It will output the different settings you can configure for the line
discipline of any terminal emulator (pseudoterminal or virtual con-
sole).
Here’s what I get on one of my pseudoterminal:
29 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
speed 38400 baud; rows 45; columns 105; line = 0;

☰ MENU
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = Û; eof = ^D; eol
= <undef>; eol2 = <undef>; swtch = <undef>;
start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W;
lnext = ^V; discard = Ô; min = 1; time = 0;
-parenb -parodd -cmspar cs8 -hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal
-crtscts
-ignbrk -brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr
-igncr icrnl ixon -ixoff -iuclc -ixany -imaxbel
iutf8
opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0
cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0
isig icanon iexten echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase
-tostop -echoprt echoctl echoke -flusho
-extproc
Let’s look at the output in details, beginning by the first line:
speed 38400 baud; rows 45; columns 105; line = 0;
The speed is another artifact from the bygone era when physical
teletypes were ruling the computer world. The rows, columns, and
line of the terminal are not always accurate either.
The second and third lines are more interesting:
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = Û; eof = ^D; eol
= <undef>; eol2 = <undef>; swtch = <undef>;
start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W;
30 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
lnext = ^V; discard = Ô; min = 1; time = 0;

☰ MENU
They describe the different control characters and control sequences

you can configure. For example intr = ^C means that you can use
the control sequence CTRL+c to send an interrupt signal.
We can configure these control sequences as we see fit. For exam-

ple, if we want to send an interrupt signal with CTRL+r , we can run:
stty intr ^R
You can use here the hat notation for representing CTRL+r : a carret
^ represents here the CTRL key. You can also type the actual control
character ^R by first hitting CTRL+v , followed by CTRL+r .
In general, you can use CTRL+v followed by a control character to

get its raw value.
You can also run stty --help to learn more about all these bind-
ings. Here are the most interesting to me:
Control Description Default
intr Send an interrupt signal. ^C ( CTRL+C )
eof Send end of file, terminating the input. ^D ( CTRL+D )
erase Erase the character before the cursor. ^?

( BACKSPACE )
31 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
werase Erase the word before the cursor. ^W ( CTRL+w )

☰ MENU
kill Erase the current line. Û ( CTRL+u )
susp Send a stop signal (suspend a process ^Z ( CTRL+z )

which can be later resumed).
stop Stop the output (including echoing ^S ( CTRL+s )

what’s your typing).
start Start the output after it was previously ^Q ( CTRL+q )

stopped. Everything which was stored in
the buffer is sent to the terminal.
You can also use undef to disable a control character. For example:
stty start undef

stty stop undef
Let’s go back to the output of stty -a . Next, we have a list of op-

tions:
-parenb -parodd -cmspar cs8 -hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal

-crtscts
-ignbrk -brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr
-igncr icrnl ixon -ixoff -iuclc -ixany -imaxbel
iutf8
opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0
cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0
isig icanon iexten echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase
-tostop -echoprt echoctl echoke -flusho
32 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
-extproc
☰ MENU
A minus before a setting means that it’s disabled; no minus means

it’s enabled. Not all options are boolean, however. In that case, the
minus will have slightly different meanings. You can look at the
manual page of stty (by running man stty ) to have more informa-
tion.
The name of these settings are quite obscure. The first letter can
help guess what they stand for: when the settings are about the out-
put of the TTY, they will begin with an o . Same for input: they will
begin with an i .
To disable settings, you can simply give them as argument to stty.

For example:
stty -opost tostop
This will disable the setting opost , and enable the setting tostop .
Here are a couple settings of interest:
Setting Description Default
igncr Ignore carriage re- -igncr

turn (the ENTER
key). Great if you
don’t want anybody
to execute a com-
33 of 41
mand. You can still 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
use a newline char-

acter for the same ef- ☰ MENU
fect, by hitting
CTRL+j .
opost Let the line disci- opost

pline post-process
the output.
echo Output your input echo

characters back to
the terminal.
ctlecho or Echo control se- ctlecho

echoctl quences in hat nota-
tion.
onlcr Transform the line onlcr

feeds from the out-
put with the combi-
nation of carriage re-
turn / line feed.
tostop Stop background -tostop

jobs that try to write
to the terminal.
For example, to ignore carriage returns, you can run:
stty igncr
Now, you can’t send any command to your shell anymore… but you
34 of 41
can still use CTRL+j to send a line feed control character, which is 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
equivalent to the carriage return.

☰ MENU
There are other “combination of options” we can use to disable or

enable a bunch of options at once:
Setting Equivalent
cooked or -raw brkint , ignpar , istrip ,

icrnl , ixon , opost , isig ,
icanon , eof and eol with de-
fault values.
raw or -cooked -ignbrk , -brkint , -ignpar ,

-parmrk , -inpck , -istrip ,
-inlcr , -igncr , -icrnl ,
-ixon , -ixoff , -icanon ,
-opost , -isig , -iuclc ,
-ixany , -imaxbel , -xcase ,
min 1 , and time 0 .
sane -ignbrk , brkint , -inlcr ,

-igncr , icrnl , icanon , iex‐
ten , echo , echoe , echok , and
-echonl .
If you try to disable some of these options, they might be automati-

cally reset after you type ENTER to send your command to the shell.
It’s because the line editor of your shell might reset some TTY op-
tions automatically, because it can’t work with (or without) these
options.
35 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
For example, in Zsh, if I do the following:

☰ MENU
stty -echo
stty -a | grep "echo"
The output will show me that the option echo is still enabled. It was
disabled when I sent the first command to the shell, but then ZLE
(Zsh’s line editor) enabled it again.
If you really want to enable or disable some settings without your

shell’s line editor to interfere, you have two choices:
1. Disable these options, but only for a couple of commands, all

on the same command-line.
2. Disable the line editor.
For the first, you can run for example the following:
stty -echo; cat -v
Here, the semi-column ; allows us to execute two commands on

the same command line.
The option echo will be disabled for the new cat process (which
means that you’ll only see the output of cat , not the input you’re
giving to the terminal), but then when cat ends, ZLE will automati-
cally enable echo back.
36 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
If you really want to only use the terminal editing power without
any line editing, you can also turn down readline (for Bash) or ZLE
☰ MENU
(for Zsh) respectively with these commands:
bash --noediting
unsetopt zle
The first command will create a new Bash process with readline
(Bash’s line editor) disabled, the second one will only switch off
ZLE. To switch it back on, you can run setopt zle .
Last thing: we can also fetch the terminal settings for another TTY.
For example, on Linux:
stty -a -F /dev/pts/1
If your system is Unix based, try the following:
stty -a < /dev/pts/1
A Selection of Terminal
Emulators
It wouldn’t be fair to speak about terminal emulators without rec-
ommending some. Here are my favorites:
37 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
Terminal Description
☰ MENU
emulator
Urxvt An old but fast terminal emulator. Can be ex-

tended with Perl plugins.
st A very simple (and fast) terminal emulator.
Alacritty A more modern, fast (GPU-accelerated) terminal

emulator.
Kitty A complete and fast (GPU-accelerated) terminal

emulator which can do a lot. It can be extended
with plugins.
As you can see, I like fast and lightweight terminal emulators. This
is a very short list, but there are many more available out there.
This Beast of Terminal

Unraveled
That was quite a ride! Terminal emulators seem convoluted inter-
nally, mostly due to their long history. Some new terminal emulators
try nowadays to go away from this legacy, but they’re not widely
adopted yet.
What did we see in this article?
!"Teleprinters (or teletypes, abbreviated TTY) were useful to

encrypt and decrypt telegrams.
!"When the first computers appeared, teletypes were used to
38 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
send some input and receive output.

☰ MENU
!"Teleprinters were displaying input and output on paper. Video
terminal were doing the same, but on a screen.
!"As computers got more powerful, video terminals were emu-
lated in software.
!"There are two types of terminal emulators: virtual consoles
and pseudoterminals.
!"Virtual consoles are not available anymore in most OS, except
Linux-based ones.
!"A shell is a program interpreting the commands received from
a terminal (physical or emulated one).
!"A virtual console interfaces with the difference programs run-
ning (processes), including the shell, thanks to the file
/dev/tty<virtual_console_number> in Linux.
!"A pseudoterminal use two files; the one interfacing with the
processes is /dev/pts/<terminal_number> on Linux.
!"The CLI “stty” can help you configure your terminal, by
changing the control sequences, or enabling / disabling some
settings.
I believe that knowing how the terminal and most common shells
work gives you an edge, especially when your terminal don’t be-
have as you want it to. This is a complex but particularly useful
tool.
Related Sources
!"Text terminals - David S. Lawyer
!"Using a 1930 Teletype as a Linux Terminal - CuriousMarc
YouTube Channel
39 of 41 12/28/22, 9:28 AM
!"The Squeal of Data - Ernie Smith

☰ MENU
!"Interactive Computing on the PDP-1 - Computer History
Museum
!"TTY under the hood - Pierre-Jean Barau
!"The TTY demystified - Linus Åkesson
!"Linux terminals, tty, pty, and shell - Nicola Apicella
!"TTY drivers - Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, Greg
Kroah-Hartman
!"man tty
!"man 4 tty
!"man 4 pts
!"man 7 pty
!"man 4 console_codes
Let's Connect
You'll receive each month the last article with additional resources
and updates.
I want more!
Here's how it looks
You can reply to any email if you have questions, problems, or feed-
back. I'll write back as soon as I can.
Share Your Knowledge
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A Guide to the Terminal, Console, and Shell https://thevaluable.

#"The Birth of Unix

#Tools #Mouseless 27 Dec 2022

A Guide to the Terminal,

This is a boring morning for every employee of

Dave, your colleague developer, loudly explain to an intern what

Mesmerized by the nonsensical discourse of your colleague, you be-

vine tools, For you to stop looking like ignorant fools.

Everybody gathers around Davina to hear her story. Her music

!"The legacy of physical teletypes in Unix-based systems.

In this article, I’ll mostly speak about terminals in the context of a

based systems at large (including macOS).

From the Telegraph to the

One of the biggest accomplishment in this quest was the invention

sible to send messages in plain text, so the operators had to encrypt

Emitter Operator 1 encrypt & send Operator 2 decrypt Receptor

There were many types of telegraph invented throughout the 18th

The Teleprinter, Teletype, or TTY

A Creed Model 7 teleprinter, 1931 - source

As you can see, it was a physical device composed of a keyboard

Emitter Teleprinter 1 codify & send Teleprinter 2 decode Receptor

Fast-forward to the early 1930: a new network, composed of

In 1961, the American Standard Association created a new code for

That said, the control characters themselves weren’t properly stan-

The telegram began to decline as soon as 1920, mostly because of

Computers and TTYs

Early computers could be categorized in two types:

!"Batch computers (IBM and Univac computers).

To run a bunch (a batch) of programs together on batch computers,

1. Type your code using a teletype on punch cards.

IBM mainframes with a teleprinter - source

The rise of interactive computers changed this workflow. You could

1. Type your input on a teletype, which would be printed on pa-

A Bendix G-15 - source

These teletypes were connected to the computer using a serial port.

The ASR-33 (introduced in 1963) was a widely used teletype at the

As we saw, there were a handful of control characters available to

It’s interesting to note that, at the beginning, the interactive comput-

We’ve here the origin of the command-line interface: a text-only in-

What if we replace the sheet of paper with a screen?

It was similar to a teletype. Instead of printing the input and output

A DEC VT100 video terminal - source

The video terminals were also called “console”, or simply “termi-

Unix System in AT&T

The Birth of Unix

Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie on a PDP-11 - source

With Unix, almost everything is represented by a file. External de-

For example, in a multi-user context, if three teletypes were con-

The file /dev/tty0 always represent the current terminal.

We can now transmit commands to the computer thanks to these ex-

It’s what the shell is good for.

1. They take your sweet input, and display it.

Imagine that you’re an AT&T employee working with Dennis

Ritchie. You’re writing ls on your video terminal, and send it to

ENTER key on our modern keyboards). The shell, running on the

The shell can also interpret a list of commands described in a shell

Here’s what you always wanted to see: a fancy 3D animation fol-

If you can, watch the whole video. It’s awesome.

late the system in software?

That’s where the TTY began to be emulated.

When we speak about terminal nowadays, we think about a piece of

We can distinguish two families of terminal emulators: virtual con-