How to Stop a Program in Linux Terminal – Guide
It’s funny how the simplest things can get complicated when you’re new to something. The other day, I found out that my friend couldn’t figure it out. how to exit the superior command. Instead of interrupting the command, it closed the entire terminal application. Not only is this unnecessary, it’s not a good thing to do either.
Stopping programs on Linux
On Linux, you can use the Ctrl + C keys to stop a program running in the terminal. This works for Ubuntu as well as any other Linux distribution. See the ping command, for example. If you don’t stop, it will continue to display the result. Hold the Ctrl key button and press the C key at the same time. It sends the SIGKILL signal to the running program to force the command to end. Do you see the ^C? The caret (^) means Ctrl. So basically the terminal shows the Ctrl+C keys as ^C. Ctrl + C works great for commands designed to keep running until stopped. You feel like you need to cancel the command, use Ctrl + C. In a more complicated method, you can find the process ID and kill a running process. This is something more advanced and only used when the process is running in the background or by another user or another terminal window. Also, there are some other commands and command line tools that have their own output commands. Let me briefly mention some of them here.
How to exit editor vim
The existing Vim editor made a lot of jokes in the Linux world. It’s hard to find out when you’re new to this powerful command-line based text editor. Among the various ways to exit vim, the most common is to press the Esc key, then type a colon (:) and then type q! to force quit without saving or wq to save and exit.
How to exit Nano editor
Exiting Nano editor is a little simpler than exiting Vim. Why? Because the Nano mentions the shortcut at the bottom. You may not understand if you’re new, but at least you’ll be able to find out next time. To exit Nano, press Ctrl + X. It will ask you whether you want to save the changes made to the file or not. You can enter your choice.
How to leave less command
less is a wonderful command that lets you view without cluttering the terminal screen like the cat command. If you are inside the less command view, use the q key to exit less.
How to exit the terminal
To exit the terminal itself, instead of closing the terminal, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + D or type the exit command: exit It actually exists from the current shell. When you open a terminal on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution, it runs the default shell. When you exit this shell, the terminal also terminates. Ctrl + D is the shortcut to do the same and exit the terminal.
Final note
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