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These commands control the way screen treats individual windows
in a session. See section Virtual Terminal, for commands to control the
terminal emulation itself.
You can customize each window's name in the window display (viewed with
the windows command (see section Windows) by setting it with
one of the title commands. Normally the name displayed is the actual
command name of the program created in the window. However, it is
sometimes useful to distinguish various programs of the same name or to
change the name on-the-fly to reflect the current state of the window.
The default name for all shell windows can be set with the
shelltitle command (see section Shell). You can specify the name you
want for a window with the `-t' option to the screen command
when the window is created (see section Screen Command). To change the name after
the window has been created you can use the title-string escape-sequence
(ESC k name ESC \) and the title command
(C-a A). The former can be output from an application to control the
window's name under software control, and the latter will prompt for a
name when typed. You can also bind predefined names to keys with the
title command to set things quickly without prompting.
(C-a A)
Set the name of the current window to windowalias. If no name is
specified, screen prompts for one.
screen has a shell-specific heuristic that is enabled by
setting the window's name to search|name and arranging to have a
null title escape-sequence output as a part of your prompt. The
search portion specifies an end-of-prompt search string, while the
name portion specifies the default shell name for the window. If
the name ends in a `:' screen will add what it
believes to be the current command running in the window to the end of
the specified name (e.g. name:cmd). Otherwise the current
command name supersedes the shell name while it is running.
Here's how it works: you must modify your shell prompt to output a null
title-escape-sequence (ESC k ESC \) as a part of your prompt.
The last part of your prompt must be the same as the string you
specified for the search portion of the title. Once this is set
up, screen will use the title-escape-sequence to clear the previous
command name and get ready for the next command. Then, when a newline
is received from the shell, a search is made for the end of the prompt.
If found, it will grab the first word after the matched string and use
it as the command name. If the command name begins with `!',
`%', or `^', screen will use the first word on the
following line (if found) in preference to the just-found name. This
helps csh users get more accurate titles when using job control or
history recall commands.
set prompt='<ESC>[0000m<ESC>k<ESC>\% '
The escape-sequence `<ESC>[0000m' not only normalizes the character attributes, but all the zeros round the length of the invisible characters up to 8.
Tcsh handles escape codes in the prompt more intelligently, so you can specify your prompt like this:
set prompt="%{\ek\e\\%}\% "
Bash users will probably want to echo the escape sequence in the PROMPT_COMMAND:
PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -n -e "\033k\033\134"'
(I used `\134' to output a `\' because of a bug in v1.04).
screen -t top 2 nice top
Adding this line to your .screenrc would start a niced version of the
top command in window 2 name `top' rather than `nice'.
shelltitle '> |csh' screen 1
This file would start a shell using the given shelltitle. The title specified is an auto-title that would expect the prompt and the typed command to look something like the following:
/usr/joe/src/dir> trn
(it looks after the '> ' for the command name). The window status would show the name `trn' while the command was running, and revert to `csh' upon completion.
bind R screen -t '% |root:' su
Having this command in your .screenrc would bind the key sequence
C-a R to the su command and give it an auto-title name of
`root:'. For this auto-title to work, the screen could look
something like this:
% !em emacs file.c
Here the user typed the csh history command !em which ran the
previously entered emacs command. The window status would show
`root:emacs' during the execution of the command, and revert to
simply `root:' at its completion.
bind o title bind E title "" bind u title (unknown)
The first binding doesn't have any arguments, so it would prompt you for a title when you type C-a o. The second binding would clear an auto-titles current setting (C-a E). The third binding would set the current window's title to `(unknown)' (C-a u).
(none)
Sets whether a clear screen sequence should nuke all the output
that has not been written to the terminal. See section Obuflimit.
This property is set per display, not per window.
(none)
Same as the autonuke command except that the default setting for
new displays is also changed. Initial setting is off.
Note that you can use the special AN terminal capability if you
want to have a terminal type dependent setting.
(none)
Grabs or ungrabs the machines console output to a window. When the argument
is omitted the current state is displayed.
Note: Only the owner of `/dev/console' can grab the console
output. This command is only available if the host supports the ioctl
TIOCCONS.
(C-a k, C-a C-k)
Kill the current window.
If there is an exec command running (see section Exec) then it is killed.
Otherwise the process (e.g. shell) running in the window receives a
HANGUP condition,
the window structure is removed and screen switches to the previously
displayed window. When the last window is destroyed, screen exits.
Caution: emacs users may find themselves killing their
emacs session when trying to delete the current line. For this
reason, it is probably wise to use a different command character
(see section Command Character) or rebind kill to another key
sequence, such as C-a K (see section Key Binding).
(none)
Same as the login command except that the default setting for new
windows is changed. This defaults to `on' unless otherwise specified at
compile time (see section Installation). Both commands are only present when
screen has been compiled with utmp support.
(C-a L)
Adds or removes the entry in `/etc/utmp' for the current window.
This controls whether or not the window is logged in. In addition
to this toggle, it is convenient to have "log in" and "log out"
keys. For instance, bind I login on and bind O
login off will map these keys to be C-a I and C-a O
(see section Key Binding).
(none)
The mode of each newly allocated pseudo-tty is set to mode.
mode is an octal number as used by chmod(1). Defaults to 0622 for
windows which are logged in, 0600 for others (e.g. when -ln was
specified for creation. See section Screen Command).
(none)
When any activity occurs in a background window that is being monitored,
screen displays a notification in the message line. The
notification message can be redefined by means of the activity
command. Each occurrence of `%' in message is replaced by
the number of the window in which activity has occurred, and each
occurrence of `~' is replaced by the definition for bell in your
termcap (usually an audible bell). The default message is
'Activity in window %'
Note that monitoring is off for all windows by default, but can be altered
by use of the monitor command (C-a M).
(none)
Same as the monitor command except that the default setting for
new windows is changed. Initial setting is `off'.
(C-a M)
Toggles monitoring of the current window. When monitoring is turned on
and the affected window is switched into the background, the activity
notification message will be displayed in the status line at the first
sign of output, and the window will also be marked with an `@' in
the window-status display (see section Windows). Monitoring defaults to
`off' for all windows.
(none)
If the output buffer contains more bytes than the specified limit, no
more data will be read from the windows. The default value is 256. If
you have a fast display (like xterm), you can set it to some
higher value. If no argument is specified, the current setting is displayed.
This property is set per display, not per window.
(none)
Same as the obuflimit command except that the default setting for new
displays is also changed. Initial setting is 256 bytes. Note that you can use
the special OL terminal capability if you want to have a terminal
type dependent limit.
(C-a w, C-a C-w)
Uses the message line to display a list of all the windows. Each
window is listed by number with the name of the program running in the
window (or its title); the current window is marked with a `*';
the previous window is marked with a `-'; all the windows that are
logged in are marked with a `$' (see section Login); a background
window that has received a bell is marked with a `!'; a background
window that is being monitored and has had activity occur is marked with
an `@' (see section Monitoring); a window which has output logging turned
on is marked with `(L)'; windows occupied by other users are marked with
`&'; windows in the zombie state are marked with `Z'.
If this list is too long to fit on the terminal's status line only the
portion around the current window is displayed.
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