TERMIOS(4) MachTen Programmer’s Manual TERMIOS(4)

NAME
termios - general terminal line discipline

SYNOPSIS
#include <termios.h>

DESCRIPTION
This describes a general terminal line discipline that is supported on
tty asynchronous communication ports.

Opening a Terminal Device File
When a terminal file is opened, it normally causes the process to wait
until a connection is established. For most hardware, the presence of a
connection is indicated by the assertion of the hardware CARRIER line. If
the termios structure associated with the terminal file has the CLOCAL
flag set in the cflag, or if the O_NONBLOCK flag is set in the open(2)
call, then the open will succeed even without a connection being present.
In practice, applications seldom open these files; they are opened by
special programs, such as getty(2) or rlogind(2), and become an applica-
tion’s standard input, output, and error files.

Job Control in a Nutshell
Every process is associated with a particular process group and session.
The grouping is hierarchical: every member of a particular process group
is a member of the same session. This structuring is used in managing
groups of related processes for purposes of job control; that is, the
ability from the keyboard (or from program control) to simultaneously
stop or restart a complex command (a command composed of one or more re-
lated processes). The grouping into process groups allows delivering of
signals that stop or start the group as a whole, along with arbitrating
which process group has access to the single controlling terminal. The
grouping at a higher layer into sessions is to restrict the job control
related signals and system calls to within processes resulting from a
particular instance of a "login". Typically, a session is created when a
user logs in, and the login terminal is setup to be the controlling ter-
minal; all processes spawned from that login shell are in the same ses-
sion, and inherit the controlling terminal. A job control shell operat-
ing interactively (that is, reading commands from a terminal) normally
groups related processes together by placing them into the same process
group. A set of processes in the same process group is collectively re-
ferred to as a "job". When the foreground process group of the terminal
is the same as the process group of a particular job, that job is said to
be in the "foreground". When the process group of the terminal is dif-
ferent than the process group of a job (but is still the controlling ter-
minal), that job is said to be in the "background". Normally the shell
reads a command and starts the job that implements that command. If the
command is to be started in the foreground (typical), it sets the process
group of the terminal to the process group of the started job, waits for
the job to complete, and then sets the process group of the terminal back
to its own process group (it puts itself into the foreground). If the
job is to be started in the background (as denoted by the shell operator
"&"), it never changes the process group of the terminal and doesn’t wait
for the job to complete (that is, it immediately attempts to read the
next command). If the job is started in the foreground, the user may
type a key (usually ‘^Z’) which generates the terminal stop signal
(SIGTSTP) and has the affect of stopping the entire job. The shell will
notice that the job stopped, and will resume running after placing itself
in the foreground. The shell also has commands for placing stopped jobs
in the background, and for placing stopped or background jobs into the
foreground.

Orphaned Process Groups
An orphaned process group is a process group that has no process whose
parent is in a different process group, yet is in the same session. Con-
ceptually it means a process group that doesn’t have a parent that could
do anything if it were to be stopped. For example, the initial login
shell is typically in an orphaned process group. Orphaned process groups
are immune to keyboard generated stop signals and job control signals re-
sulting from reads or writes to the controlling terminal.

The Controlling Terminal
A terminal may belong to a process as its controlling terminal. Each
process of a session that has a controlling terminal has the same con-
trolling terminal. A terminal may be the controlling terminal for at
most one session. The controlling terminal for a session is allocated by
the session leader by issuing the TIOCSCTTY ioctl. A controlling termi-
nal is never acquired by merely opening a terminal device file. When a
controlling terminal becomes associated with a session, its foreground
process group is set to the process group of the session leader.

The controlling terminal is inherited by a child process during a fork(2)
function call. A process relinquishes its controlling terminal when it
creates a new session with the function; other processes remaining in the
old session that had this terminal as their controlling terminal continue
to have it. A process does not relinquish its controlling terminal sim-
ply by closing all of its file descriptors associated with the control-
ling terminal if other processes continue to have it open.

When a controlling process terminates, the controlling terminal is disas-
sociated from the current session, allowing it to be acquired by a new
session leader. Subsequent access to the terminal by other processes in
the earlier session will be denied, with attempts to access the terminal
treated as if modem disconnect had been sensed.

Terminal Access Control
If a process is in the foreground process group of its controlling termi-
nal, read operations are allowed. Any attempts by a process in a back-
ground process group to read from its controlling terminal causes a
SIGTTIN signal to be sent to the process’s group unless one of the fol-
lowing special cases apply: If the reading process is ignoring or block-
ing the SIGTTIN signal, or if the process group of the process is or-
phaned, the read(2) returns -1 with errno set to EIO and no signal is
sent. The default action of the SIGTTIN signal is to stop the process to
which it is sent.

If a process is in the foreground process group of its controlling termi-
nal, write operations are allowed. Attempts by a process in a background
process group to write to its controlling terminal will cause the process
group to be sent a SIGTTOU signal unless one of the following special
cases apply: If TOSTOP is not set, or if TOSTOP is set and the process
is ignoring or blocking the SIGTTOU signal, the process is allowed to
write to the terminal and the SIGTTOU signal is not sent. If TOSTOP is
set, and the process group of the writing process is orphaned, and the
writing process is not ignoring or blocking SIGTTOU, the write returns -1
with errno set to EIO and no signal is sent.

Certain calls that set terminal parameters are treated in the same fash-
ion as write, except that TOSTOP is ignored; that is, the effect is iden-
tical to that of terminal writes when TOSTOP is set.

Input Processing and Reading Data
A terminal device associated with a terminal device file may operate in
full-duplex mode, so that data may arrive even while output is occurring.
Each terminal device file has associated with it an input queue, into
which incoming data is stored by the system before being read by a pro-
cess. The system imposes a limit, {MAX_INPUT}, on the number of bytes
that may be stored in the input queue. The behavior of the system when
this limit is exceeded depends on the setting of the IMAXBEL flag in the
termios c_iflag. If this flag is set, the terminal is sent an ASCII BEL
character each time a character is received while the input queue is
full. Otherwise, the input queue is flushed upon receiving the charac-
ter.

Two general kinds of input processing are available, determined by
whether the terminal device file is in canonical mode or noncanonical
mode. Additionally, input characters are processed according to the
c_iflag and c_lflag fields. Such processing can include echoing, which
in general means transmitting input characters immediately back to the
terminal when they are received from the terminal. This is useful for
terminals that can operate in full-duplex mode.

The manner in which data is provided to a process reading from a terminal
device file is dependent on whether the terminal device file is in canon-
ical or noncanonical mode.

Another dependency is whether the O_NONBLOCK flag is set by open() or
fcntl(). If the O_NONBLOCK flag is clear, then the read request is
blocked until data is available or a signal has been received. If the
O_NONBLOCK flag is set, then the read request is completed, without
blocking, in one of three ways:

1. If there is enough data available to satisfy the entire re-
quest, and the read completes successfully the number of bytes
read is returned.

2. If there is not enough data available to satisfy the entire
request, and the read completes successfully, having read as
much data as possible, the number of bytes read is returned.

3. If there is no data available, the read returns -1, with errno
set to EAGAIN.

When data is available depends on whether the input processing mode is
canonical or noncanonical.

Canonical Mode Input Processing
In canonical mode input processing, terminal input is processed in units
of lines. A line is delimited by a newline ‘0 character, an end-of-
file (EOF) character, or an end-of-line (EOL) character. See the Special
Characters section for more information on EOF and EOL. This means that a
read request will not return until an entire line has been typed, or a
signal has been received. Also, no matter how many bytes are requested
in the read call, at most one line is returned. It is not, however, nec-
essary to read a whole line at once; any number of bytes, even one, may
be requested in a read without losing information.

{MAX_CANON} is a limit on the number of bytes in a line. The behavior of
the system when this limit is exceeded is the same as when the input
queue limit {MAX_INPUT}, is exceeded.

Erase and kill processing occur when either of two special characters,
the ERASE and KILL characters (see the Special Characters section), is
received. This processing affects data in the input queue that has not
yet been delimited by a newline NL, EOF, or EOL character. This un-
delimited data makes up the current line. The ERASE character deletes
the last character in the current line, if there is any. The KILL char-
acter deletes all data in the current line, if there is any. The ERASE
and KILL characters have no effect if there is no data in the current
line. The ERASE and KILL characters themselves are not placed in the in-
put queue.

Noncanonical Mode Input Processing
In noncanonical mode input processing, input bytes are not assembled into
lines, and erase and kill processing does not occur. The values of the
MIN and TIME members of the c_cc array are used to determine how to pro-
cess the bytes received.

MIN represents the minimum number of bytes that should be received when
the read function successfully returns. TIME is a timer of 0.1 second
granularity that is used to time out bursty and short term data transmis-
sions. If MIN is greater than { MAX_INPUT}, the response to the request
is undefined. The four possible values for MIN and TIME and their inter-
actions are described below.

Case A: MIN > 0, TIME > 0
In this case TIME serves as an inter-byte timer and is activated after
the first byte is received. Since it is an inter-byte timer, it is reset
after a byte is received. The interaction between MIN and TIME is as
follows: as soon as one byte is received, the inter-byte timer is start-
ed. If MIN bytes are received before the inter-byte timer expires (re-
member that the timer is reset upon receipt of each byte), the read is
satisfied. If the timer expires before MIN bytes are received, the char-
acters received to that point are returned to the user. Note that if
TIME expires at least one byte is returned because the timer would not
have been enabled unless a byte was received. In this case (MIN > 0,
TIME > 0) the read blocks until the MIN and TIME mechanisms are activated
by the receipt of the first byte, or a signal is received. If data is in
the buffer at the time of the read(), the result is as if data had been
received immediately after the read().

Case B: MIN > 0, TIME = 0
In this case, since the value of TIME is zero, the timer plays no role
and only MIN is significant. A pending read is not satisfied until MIN
bytes are received (i.e., the pending read blocks until MIN bytes are re-
ceived), or a signal is received. A program that uses this case to read
record-based terminal I/O may block indefinitely in the read operation.

Case C: MIN = 0, TIME > 0
In this case, since MIN = 0, TIME no longer represents an inter-byte
timer. It now serves as a read timer that is activated as soon as the
read function is processed. A read is satisfied as soon as a single byte
is received or the read timer expires. Note that in this case if the
timer expires, no bytes are returned. If the timer does not expire, the
only way the read can be satisfied is if a byte is received. In this
case the read will not block indefinitely waiting for a byte; if no byte
is received within TIME*0.1 seconds after the read is initiated, the read
returns a value of zero, having read no data. If data is in the buffer
at the time of the read, the timer is started as if data had been re-
ceived immediately after the read.

Case D: MIN = 0, TIME = 0
The minimum of either the number of bytes requested or the number of
bytes currently available is returned without waiting for more bytes to
be input. If no characters are available, read returns a value of zero,
having read no data.

Writing Data and Output Processing
When a process writes one or more bytes to a terminal device file, they
are processed according to the c_oflag field (see the Output Modes sec-
tion). The implementation may provide a buffering mechanism; as such,
when a call to write() completes, all of the bytes written have been
scheduled for transmission to the device, but the transmission will not
necessarily have been completed.

Special Characters
Certain characters have special functions on input or output or both.
These functions are summarized as follows:

INTR Special character on input and is recognized if the ISIG flag
(see the Local Modes section) is enabled. Generates a SIGINT
signal which is sent to all processes in the foreground process
group for which the terminal is the controlling terminal. If
ISIG is set, the INTR character is discarded when processed.

QUIT Special character on input and is recognized if the ISIG flag is
enabled. Generates a SIGQUIT signal which is sent to all pro-
cesses in the foreground process group for which the terminal is
the controlling terminal. If ISIG is set, the QUIT character is
discarded when processed.

ERASE Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. Erases the last character in the current line; see
Canonical Mode Input Processing. It does not erase beyond the
start of a line, as delimited by an NL, EOF, or EOL character.
If ICANON is set, the ERASE character is discarded when pro-
cessed.

KILL Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. Deletes the entire line, as delimited by a NL, EOF, or
EOL character. If ICANON is set, the KILL character is discarded
when processed.

EOF Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. When received, all the bytes waiting to be read are im-
mediately passed to the process, without waiting for a newline,
and the EOF is discarded. Thus, if there are no bytes waiting
(that is, the EOF occurred at the beginning of a line), a byte
count of zero is returned from the read(), representing an end-
of-file indication. If ICANON is set, the EOF character is dis-
carded when processed. NL Special character on input and is rec-
ognized if the ICANON flag is set. It is the line delimiter
‘0.

EOL Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. Is an additional line delimiter, like NL.

SUSP If the ISIG flag is enabled, receipt of the SUSP character causes
a SIGTSTP signal to be sent to all processes in the foreground
process group for which the terminal is the controlling terminal,
and the SUSP character is discarded when processed.

STOP Special character on both input and output and is recognized if
the IXON (output control) or IXOFF (input control) flag is set.
Can be used to temporarily suspend output. It is useful with
fast terminals to prevent output from disappearing before it can
be read. If IXON is set, the STOP character is discarded when
processed.

START Special character on both input and output and is recognized if
the IXON (output control) or IXOFF (input control) flag is set.
Can be used to resume output that has been suspended by a STOP
character. If IXON is set, the START character is discarded when
processed. CR Special character on input and is recognized if ’, as denoted in
the ICANON flag is set; it is the ‘ the C Stan-
dard {2}. When ICANON and ICRNL are set and IGNCR is not set,
this character is translated into a NL, and has the same effect
as a NL character.

The following special characters are extensions defined by this system
and are not a part of 1003.1 termios.

EOL2 Secondary EOL character. Same function as EOL.

WERASE Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. Erases the last word in the current line according to
one of two algorithms. If the ALTWERASE flag is not set, first
any preceding whitespace is erased, and then the maximal sequence
of non-whitespace characters. If ALTWERASE is set, first any
preceding whitespace is erased, and then the maximal sequence of
alphabetic/underscores or non alphabetic/underscores. As a spe-
cial case in this second algorithm, the first previous non-
whitespace character is skipped in determining whether the pre-
ceding word is a sequence of alphabetic/undercores. This sounds
confusing but turns out to be quite practical.

REPRINT
Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. Causes the current input edit line to be retyped.

DSUSP Has similar actions to the SUSP character, except that the
SIGTSTP signal is delivered when one of the processes in the
foreground process group issues a read() to the controlling ter-
minal.

LNEXT Special character on input and is recognized if the IEXTEN flag
is set. Receipt of this character causes the next character to
be taken literally.

DISCARD
Special character on input and is recognized if the IEXTEN flag
is set. Receipt of this character toggles the flushing of termi-
nal output.

STATUS Special character on input and is recognized if the ICANON flag
is set. Receipt of this character causes a SIGINFO signal to be
sent to the foreground process group of the terminal. Also, if
the NOKERNINFO flag is not set, it causes the kernel to write a
status message to the terminal that displays the current load av-
erage, the name of the command in the foreground, its process ID,
the symbolic wait channel, the number of user and system seconds
used, the percentage of cpu the process is getting, and the resi-
dent set size of the process.

The NL and CR characters cannot be changed. The values for all the re-
maining characters can be set and are described later in the document un-
der Special Control Characters.

Special character functions associated with changeable special control
characters can be disabled individually by setting their value to
{_POSIX_VDISABLE}; see Special Control Characters.

If two or more special characters have the same value, the function per-
formed when that character is received is undefined.

Modem Disconnect
If a modem disconnect is detected by the terminal interface for a con-
trolling terminal, and if CLOCAL is not set in the c_cflag field for the
terminal, the SIGHUP signal is sent to the controlling process associated
with the terminal. Unless other arrangements have been made, this causes
the controlling process to terminate. Any subsequent call to the read()
function returns the value zero, indicating end of file. Thus, processes
that read a terminal file and test for end-of-file can terminate appro-
priately after a disconnect. Any subsequent write() to the terminal de-
vice returns -1, with errno set to EIO, until the device is closed.

General Terminal Interface
Closing a Terminal Device File
The last process to close a terminal device file causes any output to be
sent to the device and any input to be discarded. Then, if HUPCL is set
in the control modes, and the communications port supports a disconnect
function, the terminal device performs a disconnect.

Parameters That Can Be Set
Routines that need to control certain terminal I/O characteristics do so
by using the termios structure as defined in the header <termios.h>. This
structure contains minimally four scalar elements of bit flags and one
array of special characters. The scalar flag elements are named:
c_iflag, c_oflag, c_cflag, and c_lflag. The character array is named
c_cc, and its maximum index is NCCS.

Input Modes
Values of the c_iflag field describe the basic terminal input control,
and are composed of following masks:

IGNBRK /* ignore BREAK condition */
BRKINT /* map BREAK to SIGINTR */
IGNPAR /* ignore (discard) parity errors */
PARMRK /* mark parity and framing errors */
INPCK /* enable checking of parity errors */
ISTRIP /* strip 8th bit off chars */
INLCR /* map NL into CR */
IGNCR /* ignore CR */
ICRNL /* map CR to NL (ala CRMOD) */
IXON /* enable output flow control */
IXOFF /* enable input flow control */
IXANY /* any char will restart after stop */
IMAXBEL /* ring bell on input queue full */

In the context of asynchronous serial data transmission, a break condi-
tion is defined as a sequence of zero-valued bits that continues for more
than the time to send one byte. The entire sequence of zero-valued bits
is interpreted as a single break condition, even if it continues for a
time equivalent to more than one byte. In contexts other than asyn-
chronous serial data transmission the definition of a break condition is
implementation defined.

If IGNBRK is set, a break condition detected on input is ignored, that
is, not put on the input queue and therefore not read by any process. If
IGNBRK is not set and BRKINT is set, the break condition flushes the in-
put and output queues and if the terminal is the controlling terminal of
a foreground process group, the break condition generates a single SIGINT
signal to that foreground process group. If neither IGNBRK nor BRKINT is
set, a break condition is read as a single ‘ ’, or if PARMRK is set, as
‘377’, ‘ ’, ‘ ’.

If IGNPAR is set, a byte with a framing or parity error (other than
break) is ignored.

If PARMRK is set, and IGNPAR is not set, a byte with a framing or parity
error (other than break) is given to the application as the three-
character sequence ‘377’, ‘ ’, X, where ‘377’, ‘ ’ is a two-character
flag preceding each sequence and X is the data of the character received
in error. To avoid ambiguity in this case, if ISTRIP is not set, a valid
character of ‘377’ is given to the application as ‘377’, ‘377’. If
neither PARMRK nor IGNPAR is set, a framing or parity error (other than
break) is given to the application as a single character ‘ ’.

If INPCK is set, input parity checking is enabled. If INPCK is not set,
input parity checking is disabled, allowing output parity generation
without input parity errors. Note that whether input parity checking is
enabled or disabled is independent of whether parity detection is enabled
or disabled (see Control Modes). If parity detection is enabled but input
parity checking is disabled, the hardware to which the terminal is con-
nected recognizes the parity bit, but the terminal special file does not
check whether this bit is set correctly or not.

If ISTRIP is set, valid input bytes are first stripped to seven bits,
otherwise all eight bits are processed.

If INLCR is set, a received NL character is translated into a CR charac-
ter. If IGNCR is set, a received CR character is ignored (not read). If
IGNCR is not set and ICRNL is set, a received CR character is translated
into a NL character.

If IXON is set, start/stop output control is enabled. A received STOP
character suspends output and a received START character restarts output.
If IXANY is also set, then any character may restart output. When IXON is
set, START and STOP characters are not read, but merely perform flow con-
trol functions. When IXON is not set, the START and STOP characters are
read.

If IXOFF is set, start/stop input control is enabled. The system shall
transmit one or more STOP characters, which are intended to cause the
terminal device to stop transmitting data, as needed to prevent the input
queue from overflowing and causing the undefined behavior described in
Input Processing and Reading Data, and shall transmit one or more START
characters, which are intended to cause the terminal device to resume
transmitting data, as soon as the device can continue transmitting data
without risk of overflowing the input queue. The precise conditions un-
der which STOP and START characters are transmitted are implementation
defined.

If IMAXBEL is set and the input queue is full, subsequent input shall
cause an ASCII BEL character to be transmitted to the the output queue.

The initial input control value after open() is implementation defined.

Output Modes
Values of the c_oflag field describe the basic terminal output control,
and are composed of the following masks:

OPOST /* enable following output processing */
ONLCR /* map NL to CR-NL (ala CRMOD) */
OXTABS /* expand tabs to spaces */
ONOEOT /* discard EOT’s ‘^D’ on output) */

If OPOST is set, the remaining flag masks are interpreted as follows;
otherwise characters are transmitted without change.

If ONLCR is set, newlines are translated to carriage return, linefeeds.

If OXTABS is set, tabs are expanded to the appropriate number of spaces
(assuming 8 column tab stops).

If ONOEOT is set, ASCII EOT NS ’s are discarded on output.

Control Modes
Values of the c_cflag field describe the basic terminal hardware control,
and are composed of the following masks. Not all values specified are
supported by all hardware.

CSIZE /* character size mask */
CS5 /* 5 bits (pseudo) */
CS6 /* 6 bits */
CS7 /* 7 bits */
CS8 /* 8 bits */
CSTOPB /* send 2 stop bits */
CREAD /* enable receiver */
PARENB /* parity enable */
PARODD /* odd parity, else even */

HUPCL /* hang up on last close */
CLOCAL /* ignore modem status lines */
CCTS_OFLOW /* CTS flow control of output */
CRTSCTS /* same as CCTS_OFLOW */
CRTS_IFLOW /* RTS flow control of input */
MDMBUF /* flow control output via Carrier */

The CSIZE bits specify the byte size in bits for both transmission and
reception. The c_cflag is masked with CSIZE and compared with the values
CS5, CS6, CS7, or CS8. This size does not include the parity bit, if any.
If CSTOPB is set, two stop bits are used, otherwise one stop bit. For
example, at 110 baud, two stop bits are normally used.

If CREAD is set, the receiver is enabled. Otherwise, no character is re-
ceived. Not all hardware supports this bit. In fact, this flag is pret-
ty silly and if it were not part of the termios specification it would be
omitted.

If PARENB is set, parity generation and detection are enabled and a pari-
ty bit is added to each character. If parity is enabled, PARODD speci-
fies odd parity if set, otherwise even parity is used.

If HUPCL is set, the modem control lines for the port are lowered when
the last process with the port open closes the port or the process termi-
nates. The modem connection is broken.

If CLOCAL is set, a connection does not depend on the state of the modem
status lines. If CLOCAL is clear, the modem status lines are monitored.

Under normal circumstances, a call to the open() function waits for the
modem connection to complete. However, if the O_NONBLOCK flag is set or
if CLOCAL has been set, the open() function returns immediately without
waiting for the connection.

The CCTS_OFLOW (CRTSCTS) flag is currently unused.

If MDMBUF is set then output flow control is controlled by the state of
Carrier Detect.

If the object for which the control modes are set is not an asynchronous
serial connection, some of the modes may be ignored; for example, if an
attempt is made to set the baud rate on a network connection to a termi-
nal on another host, the baud rate may or may not be set on the connec-
tion between that terminal and the machine it is directly connected to.

Local Modes
Values of the c_lflag field describe the control of various functions,
and are composed of the following masks.

ECHOKE /* visual erase for line kill */
ECHOE /* visually erase chars */
ECHO /* enable echoing */
ECHONL /* echo NL even if ECHO is off */
ECHOPRT /* visual erase mode for hardcopy */
ECHOCTL /* echo control chars as ^(Char) */
ISIG /* enable signals INTR, QUIT, [D]SUSP */
ICANON /* canonicalize input lines */
ALTWERASE /* use alternate WERASE algorithm */
IEXTEN /* enable DISCARD and LNEXT */
EXTPROC /* external processing */
TOSTOP /* stop background jobs from output */
FLUSHO /* output being flushed (state) */
NOKERNINFO /* no kernel output from VSTATUS */
PENDIN /* XXX retype pending input (state) */
NOFLSH /* don’t flush after interrupt */

If ECHO is set, input characters are echoed back to the terminal. If
ECHO is not set, input characters are not echoed.

If ECHOE and ICANON are set, the ERASE character causes the terminal to
erase the last character in the current line from the display, if possi-
ble. If there is no character to erase, an implementation may echo an
indication that this was the case or do nothing.

If ECHOK and ICANON are set, the KILL character causes the current line
to be discarded and the system echoes the ‘0 character after the KILL
character.

If ECHOKE and ICANON are set, the KILL character causes the current line
to be discarded and the system causes the terminal to erase the line from
the display.

If ECHOPRT and ICANON are set, the system assumes that the display is a
printing device and prints a backslash and the erased characters when
processing ERASE characters, followed by a forward slash.

If ECHOCTL is set, the system echoes control characters in a visible
fashion using a caret followed by the control character.

If ALTWERASE is set, the system uses an alternative algorithm for deter-
mining what constitutes a word when processing WERASE characters (see
WERASE).

If ECHONL and ICANON are set, the ‘0 character echoes even if ECHO is
not set.

If ICANON is set, canonical processing is enabled. This enables the
erase and kill edit functions, and the assembly of input characters into
lines delimited by NL, EOF, and EOL, as described in Canonical Mode Input
Processing.

If ICANON is not set, read requests are satisfied directly from the input
queue. A read is not satisfied until at least MIN bytes have been re-
ceived or the timeout value TIME expired between bytes. The time value
represents tenths of seconds. See Noncanonical Mode Input Processing for
more details.

If ISIG is set, each input character is checked against the special con-
trol characters INTR, QUIT, and SUSP (job control only). If an input
character matches one of these control characters, the function associat-
ed with that character is performed. If ISIG is not set, no checking is
done. Thus these special input functions are possible only if ISIG is
set.

If IEXTEN is set, implementation-defined functions are recognized from
the input data. How IEXTEN being set interacts with ICANON, ISIG, IXON,
or IXOFF is implementation defined. If IEXTEN is not set, then implemen-
tation-defined functions are not recognized, and the corresponding input
characters are not processed as described for ICANON, ISIG, IXON, and
IXOFF.

If NOFLSH is set, the normal flush of the input and output queues associ-
ated with the INTR, QUIT, and SUSP characters are not be done.

If TOSTOP is set, the signal SIGTTOU is sent to the process group of a
process that tries to write to its controlling terminal if it is not in
the foreground process group for that terminal. This signal, by default,
stops the members of the process group. Otherwise, the output generated
by that process is output to the current output stream. Processes that
are blocking or ignoring SIGTTOU signals are excepted and allowed to pro-
duce output and the SIGTTOU signal is not sent.

If NOKERNINFO is set, the kernel does not produce a status message when
processing STATUS characters (see STATUS).

Special Control Characters
The special control characters values are defined by the array c_cc. This
table lists the array index, the corresponding special character, and the
system default value. For an accurate list of the system defaults, con-
sult the header file <ttydefaults.h>.

Index Name Special Character Default Value
VEOF EOF ^D
VEOL EOL _POSIX_VDISABLE
VEOL2 EOL2 _POSIX_VDISABLE
VERASE ERASE ^? ‘177’
VWERASE WERASE ^W
VKILL KILL ^U
VREPRINT REPRINT ^R
VINTR INTR ^C
VQUIT QUIT ^\ ‘34’
VSUSP SUSP ^Z
VDSUSP DSUSP _POSIX_VDISABLE
VSTART START ^Q
VSTOP STOP ^S
VLNEXT LNEXT ^V
VDISCARD DISCARD ^O
VMIN --- 1
VTIME --- 0
VSTATUS STATUS ^T

If the value of one of the changeable special control characters (see
Special Characters) is {_POSIX_VDISABLE}, that function is disabled; that
is, no input data is recognized as the disabled special character. If
ICANON is not set, the value of {_POSIX_VDISABLE} has no special meaning
for the VMIN and VTIME entries of the c_cc array.

The initial values of the flags and control characters after open() is
set according to the values in the header <sys/ttydefaults.h>.

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