I expect to get some flak for this, but I can't find the answer anywhere. It seems like it should be so obvious. Sometimes, when I type a bad command in a bash terminal, the cursor just jumps down to the next line without any error or anything. I can't tell what I did wrong. It's like I'm stuck in the program. Reenactment:$ tidyMe: Oops! That's not what I meant to type...:qMe: That didn't work...:exit:quitexitquit/exit/quit-exit-quit-wtf???I know I screwed up but how do I get back to the prompt without closing the terminal?
How do I exit or cancel a bad bash command?
shell;command line;terminal;kill
You can always try the obvious things like ^C, ^D (eof), Escape etc., but if all fails I usually end up suspending the command with ^Z (Control-Z) which puts me back into the shell. I then do a ps command and note the PID (process id) of the command and then issue a kill thePID (kill -9 thePID if the former didn't work) command to terminate the application. Note that this is not a tidy (no pun intended) way to terminate the application/command and you run the risk of perhaps no saving some data etc.An example (I'd have used tidy but I don't have it installed):$ gnuplot    G N U P L O T    Version 4.2 patchlevel 6      ....    Send bug reports and suggestions to <http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot>Terminal type set to 'wxt'gnuplot> gnuplot>               #####  typed ^Z here[1]+  Stopped                 gnuplot$ ps  PID TTY          TIME CMD 1681 pts/1    00:00:00 tcsh 1690 pts/1    00:00:00 bash 1708 pts/1    00:00:00 gnuplot 1709 pts/1    00:00:00 ps$ kill 1708            ###### didn't kill the command as ps shows$ ps  PID TTY          TIME CMD 1681 pts/1    00:00:00 tcsh 1690 pts/1    00:00:00 bash 1708 pts/1    00:00:00 gnuplot 1710 pts/1    00:00:00 ps$ kill -9 1708           ### -9 did the trick$ [1]+  Killed                  gnuplot$ ps  PID TTY          TIME CMD 1681 pts/1    00:00:00 tcsh 1690 pts/1    00:00:00 bash 1711 pts/1    00:00:00 ps