Quick Hide Windows v1.8.7 serial key or number

Short Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Overview

Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells. Each virtual terminal provides the functions of the DEC VT terminal and, in addition, several control functions from the ISO (ECMA 48, ANSI X) and ISO standards (e.g. insert/delete line and support for multiple character sets). There is a scrollback history buffer for each virtual terminal and a copy-and-paste mechanism that allows the user to move text regions between windows.

When is called, it creates a single window with a shell in it (or the specified command) and then gets out of your way so that you can use the program as you normally would. Then, at any time, you can create new (full-screen) windows with other programs in them (including more shells), kill the current window, view a list of the active windows, turn output logging on and off, copy text between windows, view the scrollback history, switch between windows, etc. All windows run their programs completely independent of each other. Programs continue to run when their window is currently not visible and even when the whole screen session is detached from the user’s terminal.

When a program terminates, (per default) kills the window that contained it. If this window was in the foreground, the display switches to the previously displayed window; if none are left, exits. Shells usually distinguish between running as login-shell or sub-shell. Screen runs them as sub-shells, unless told otherwise (See .screenrc command).

Everything you type is sent to the program running in the current window. The only exception to this is the one keystroke that is used to initiate a command to the window manager. By default, each command begins with a control-a (abbreviated from now on), and is followed by one other keystroke. The command character (see Command Character) and all the key bindings (see Key Binding) can be fully customized to be anything you like, though they are always two characters in length.

does not understand the prefix to mean control, although this notation is used in this manual for readability. Please use the caret notation ( instead of ) as arguments to e.g. the command or the option. will also print out control characters in caret notation.

The standard way to create a new window is to type . This creates a new window running a shell and switches to that window immediately, regardless of the state of the process running in the current window. Similarly, you can create a new window with a custom command in it by first binding the command to a keystroke (in your file or at the command line) and then using it just like the command. In addition, new windows can be created by running a command like:

from a shell prompt within a previously created window. This will not run another copy of , but will instead supply the command name and its arguments to the window manager (specified in the $STY environment variable) who will use it to create the new window. The above example would start the editor (editing ) and switch to its window. - Note that you cannot transport environment variables from the invoking shell to the application (emacs in this case), because it is forked from the parent screen process, not from the invoking shell.

If is writable by , an appropriate record will be written to this file for each window, and removed when the window is closed. This is useful for working with , , , , and other similar programs that use the utmp file to determine who you are. As long as is active on your terminal, the terminal’s own record is removed from the utmp file. See Login.

2 Getting Started

Before you begin to use you’ll need to make sure you have correctly selected your terminal type, just as you would for any other termcap/terminfo program. (You can do this by using , , or just , for example.)

If you’re impatient and want to get started without doing a lot more reading, you should remember this one command: (see Key Binding). Typing these two characters will display a list of the available commands and their bindings. Each keystroke is discussed in the section on keystrokes (see Default Key Bindings). Another section (see Customization) deals with the contents of your .

If your terminal is a “true” auto-margin terminal (it doesn’t allow the last position on the screen to be updated without scrolling the screen) consider using a version of your terminal’s termcap that has automatic margins turned off. This will ensure an accurate and optimal update of the screen in all circumstances. Most terminals nowadays have “magic” margins (automatic margins plus usable last column). This is the VT style type and perfectly suited for . If all you’ve got is a “true” auto-margin terminal will be content to use it, but updating a character put into the last position on the screen may not be possible until the screen scrolls or the character is moved into a safe position in some other way. This delay can be shortened by using a terminal with insert-character capability.

See Special Capabilities, for more information about telling what kind of terminal you have.

3 Invoking

Screen has the following command-line options:

‘’

Include all capabilities (with some minor exceptions) in each window’s termcap, even if must redraw parts of the display in order to implement a function.

‘’

Adapt the sizes of all windows to the size of the display. By default, may try to restore its old window sizes when attaching to resizable terminals (those with ‘’ in their descriptions, e.g. or some varieties of ).

‘’

Use as the user’s configuration file instead of the default of .

‘’

‘’

Do not start , but instead detach a session running elsewhere (see Detach). ‘’ has the same effect as typing from the controlling terminal for the session. ‘’ is the equivalent to the power detach key. If no session can be detached, this option is ignored. In combination with the / option more powerful effects can be achieved:

Reattach a session and if necessary detach it first.

Reattach a session and if necessary detach or even create it first.

Reattach a session and if necessary detach or create it. Use the first session if more than one session is available.

Reattach a session. If necessary detach and logout remotely first.

Attach here and now. In detail this means: If a session is running, then reattach. If necessary detach and logout remotely first. If it was not running create it and notify the user. This is the author’s favorite.

Attach here and now. Whatever that means, just do it.

Note: It is a good idea to check the status of your sessions with before using this option.

‘’

Set the command character to , and the character generating a literal command character (when typed after the command character) to . The defaults are and , which can be specified as ‘’. When creating a session, this option sets the default command character. In a multiuser session all users added will start off with this command character. But when attaching to an already running session, this option only changes the command character of the attaching user. This option is equivalent to the commands or respectively. (see Command Character).

‘’

‘’

‘’

Set flow-control to on, off, or automatic switching mode, respectively. This option is equivalent to the command (see Flow Control).

‘’

Set the history scrollback buffer to be lines high. Equivalent to the command (see Copy).

‘’

Cause the interrupt key (usually ) to interrupt the display immediately when flow control is on. This option is equivalent to the argument to the command (see Flow Control). Its use is discouraged.

‘’

‘’

Turn login mode on or off (for updating). This option is equivalent to the command (see Login).

‘’

‘’

Do not start , but instead print a list of session identification strings (usually of the form ; see Session Name). Sessions marked ‘’ can be resumed with . Those marked ‘’ are running and have a controlling terminal. If the session runs in multiuser mode, it is marked ‘’. Sessions marked as ‘’ either live on a different host or are dead. An unreachable session is considered dead, when its name matches either the name of the local host, or the specified parameter, if any. See the flag for a description how to construct matches. Sessions marked as ‘’ should be thoroughly checked and removed. Ask your system administrator if you are not sure. Remove sessions with the ‘’ option.

‘’

Tell to turn on automatic output logging for the windows.

‘’

By default logfile name is "screenlog.0". You can set new logfile name with the option.

‘’

Tell to ignore the environment variable. When this option is used, a new session will always be created, regardless of whether is being called from within another session or not. This flag has a special meaning in connection with the ‘’ option:

Start in detached mode. This creates a new session but doesn’t attach to it. This is useful for system startup scripts.

This also starts in detached mode, but doesn’t fork a new process. The command exits if the session terminates.

‘’

Select a more optimal output mode for your terminal rather than true VT emulation (only affects auto-margin terminals without ‘’). This can also be set in your by specifying ‘’ in the command.

‘’

Preselect a window. This is useful when you want to reattach to a specific window or you want to send a command via the ‘’ option to a specific window. As with screen’s select command, ‘’ selects the blank window. As a special case for reattach, ‘’ brings up the windowlist on the blank window, while a ‘’ will create new window. The command will not be executed if the specified window could not be found.

‘’

Suppress printing of error messages. In combination with ‘’ the exit value is set as follows: 9 indicates a directory without sessions. 10 indicates a directory with running but not attachable sessions. 11 (or more) indicates 1 (or more) usable sessions. In combination with ‘’ the exit value is as follows: 10 indicates that there is no session to resume. 12 (or more) indicates that there are 2 (or more) sessions to resume and you should specify which one to choose. In all other cases ‘’ has no effect.

‘’

Some commands now can be queried from a remote session using this flag, e.g. ’screen -Q windows’. The commands will send the response to the stdout of the querying process. If there was an error in the command, then the querying process will exit with a non-zero status.

The commands that can be queried now are:

‘’

‘’

Resume a detached session. No other options (except combinations with ‘’ or ‘’) may be specified, though the session name (see Session Name) may be needed to distinguish between multiple detached sessions. The second form is used to connect to another user’s screen session which runs in multiuser mode. This indicates that screen should look for sessions in another user’s directory. This requires setuid-root.

‘’

resumes screen only when it’s unambiguous which one to attach, usually when only one is detached. Otherwise lists available sessions.

‘’

Resume the first appropriate detached session. If successful, all other command-line options are ignored. If no detached session exists, start a new session using the specified options, just as if ‘’ had not been specified. This option is set by default if screen is run as a login-shell (actually screen uses ‘’ in that case). For combinations with the ‘’/‘’ option see there.

‘’

Set the default shell to be . By default, uses the value of the environment variable , or if it is not defined. This option is equivalent to the command (see Shell). See also there.

‘’

Set the name of the new session to . This option can be used to specify a meaningful name for the session in place of the default suffix. This name identifies the session for the and commands. This option is equivalent to the command (see Session Name).

‘’

Set the title (name) for the default shell or specified program. This option is equivalent to the command (see Shell).

‘’

Set the $TERM enviroment variable using the specified term as opposed to the default setting of .

‘’

Run screen in UTF-8 mode. This option tells screen that your terminal sends and understands UTF-8 encoded characters. It also sets the default encoding for new windows to ‘’.

‘’

Print the version number.

‘’

List available screens like , but remove destroyed sessions instead of marking them as ‘’. An unreachable session is considered dead, when its name matches either the name of the local host, or the explicitly given parameter, if any. See the flag for a description how to construct matches.

‘’

Attach to a session which is already attached elsewhere (multi-display mode). refuses to attach from within itself. But when cascading multiple screens, loops are not detected; take care.

‘’

Send the specified command to a running screen session. You may use the option to specify the screen session if you have several running. You can use the or option to tell screen to look only for attached or detached screen sessions. Note that this command doesn’t work if the session is password protected.

4 Customizing

You can modify the default settings for to fit your tastes either through a personal file which contains commands to be executed at startup, or on the fly using the command.

The file

When is invoked, it executes initialization commands from the files in the user’s home directory and . These defaults can be overridden in the following ways: For the global screenrc file searches for the environment variable (this override feature may be disabled at compile-time). The user specific screenrc file is searched for in , then . The command line option ‘’ specifies which file to use (see Invoking Screen. Commands in these files are used to set options, bind commands to keys, and to automatically establish one or more windows at the beginning of your session. Commands are listed one per line, with empty lines being ignored. A command’s arguments are separated by tabs or spaces, and may be surrounded by single or double quotes. A ‘’ turns the rest of the line into a comment, except in quotes. Unintelligible lines are warned about and ignored. Commands may contain references to environment variables. The syntax is the shell-like or . Note that this causes incompatibility with previous versions, as now the ’$’-character has to be protected with ’\’ if no variable substitution is intended. A string in single-quotes is also protected from variable substitution.

Two configuration files are shipped as examples with your screen distribution: and . They contain a number of useful examples for various commands.

Source

Command: sourcefile

(none)
Read and execute commands from file . Source commands may be nested to a maximum recursion level of ten. If is not an absolute path and screen is already processing a source command, the parent directory of the running source command file is used to search for the new command file before screen’s current directory.

Note that termcap/terminfo/termcapinfo commands only work at startup and reattach time, so they must be reached via the default screenrc files to have an effect.

Colon

Customization can also be done online, with this command:

Command: colon

()
Allows you to enter command lines. Useful for on-the-fly modification of key bindings, specific window creation and changing settings. Note that the keyword no longer exists, as of version Change default settings with commands starting with ‘’. You might think of this as the command mode of , with as its command mode (see Copy and Paste).

5 Commands

A command in can either be bound to a key, invoked from a screenrc file, or called from the prompt (see Customization). As of version , all commands can be bound to keys, although some may be less useful than others. For a number of real life working examples of the most important commands see the files and of your screen distribution.

In this manual, a command definition looks like this:

– Command: command [-n] ARG1 [ARG2] …

()
This command does something, but I can’t remember what.

An argument in square brackets (‘’) is optional. Many commands take an argument of ‘’ or ‘’, which is indicated as in the definition.

Default Key Bindings

As mentioned previously, each keyboard command consists of a followed by one other character. For your convenience, all commands that are bound to lower-case letters are also bound to their control character counterparts (with the exception of ; see below). Thus, both and can be used to create a window.

The following table shows the default key bindings:

(select)
Prompt for a window identifier and switch. See Selecting.

(windowlist -b)
Present a list of all windows for selection. See Selecting.

(select 0…select 9, select -)
Switch to window number 0…9, or the blank window. See Selecting.

(focus)
Switch the input focus to the next region. See Regions.

(other)
Toggle to the window displayed previously. If this window does no longer exist, has the same effect as . See Selecting.

(meta)
Send the command character (C-a) to window. See command. See Command Character.

(title)
Allow the user to enter a title for the current window. See Naming Windows.

(break)
Send a break to the tty. See Break.

(pow_break)
Close and reopen the tty-line. See Break.

(screen)
Create a new window with a shell and switch to that window. See Screen Command.

(clear)
Clear the screen. See Clear.

(detach)
Detach from this terminal. See Detach.

(pow_detach)
Detach and logout. See Power Detach.

(flow)
Cycle flow among ‘’, ‘’ or ‘’. See Flow.

(fit)
Resize the window to the current region size. See Fit.

(vbell)
Toggle visual bell mode. See Bell.

(hardcopy)
Write a hardcopy of the current window to the file “hardcopy.”. See Hardcopy.

(log)
Toggle logging of the current window to the file “screenlog.”. See Log.

(info)
Show info about the current window. See Info.

(kill)
Destroy the current window. See Kill.

(redisplay)
Fully refresh the current window. See Redisplay.

(login)
Toggle the current window’s login state. See Login.

(lastmsg)
Repeat the last message displayed in the message line. See Last Message.

(monitor) Toggle monitoring of the current window. See Monitor.

(next)
Switch to the next window. See Selecting.

(number)
Show the number (and title) of the current window. See Number.

(prev)
Switch to the previous window (opposite of ). See Selecting.

(xon)
Send a ^Q (ASCII XON) to the current window. See XON/XOFF.

(only)
Delete all regions but the current one. See Regions.

(wrap)
Toggle the current window’s line-wrap setting (turn the current window’s automatic margins on or off). See Wrap.

(xoff)
Send a ^S (ASCII XOFF) to the current window. See XON/XOFF.

(split)
Split the current region horizontally into two new ones. See Regions.

(time)
Show the load average and xref. See Time.

(version)
Display the version and compilation date. See Version.

(digraph)
Enter digraph. See Digraph.

(windows)
Show a list of active windows. See Windows.

(width)
Toggle between 80 and columns. See Window Size.

(lockscreen)
Lock your terminal. See Lock.

(remove)
Kill the current region. See Regions.

(suspend)
Suspend . See Suspend.

(reset)
Reset the virtual terminal to its “power-on” values. See Reset.

(dumptermcap)
Write out a file. See Dump Termcap.

(help)
Show key bindings. See Help.

(quit)
Kill all windows and terminate . See Quit.

(colon)
Enter a command line. See Colon.

(copy)
Enter copy/scrollback mode. See Copy.

(paste .)
Write the contents of the paste buffer to the stdin queue of the current window. See Paste.

(history)
Copy and paste a previous (command) line. See History.

(writebuf)
Write the paste buffer out to the screen-exchange file. See Screen Exchange.

(readbuf)
Read the screen-exchange file into the paste buffer. See Screen Exchange.

(removebuf)
Delete the screen-exchange file. See Screen Exchange.

(silence)
Start/stop monitoring the current window for inactivity. See Monitor.

(split -v)
Split the current region vertically into two new ones. See Regions.

(license)
Show the copyright page. See License.

(displays)
Show the listing of attached displays. See Displays.

Command Summary

Allow other users in this session. See Multiuser Session.

Change a user’s permissions. See Multiuser Session.

Disallow other user in this session. See Multiuser Session.

Inherit permissions granted to a group leader. See Multiuser Session.

Predefine access to new windows. See Umask.

Set the activity notification message. See Monitor.

Synonym to . See Multiuser Session.

Set all windows to partial refresh. See Redisplay.

Enables support for the "alternate screen" terminal capability. See Redisplay.

Execute a command at other displays or windows. See At.

Map attributes to colors. See Attrcolor.

Automatically detach the session on SIGHUP. See Detach.

Enable a clear screen to discard unwritten output. See Autonuke.

Define a command for the backtick string escape. See Backtick.

Change background color erase. See Character Processing.

Set the bell notification message. See Bell.

Bind a command to a key. See Bind.

Bind a string to a series of keystrokes. See Bindkey.

Blank the screen. See Screen Saver.

Define a blanker program. See Screen Saver.

Send a break signal to the current window. See Break.

Specify how to generate breaks. See Break.

Select a file for screen-exchange. See Screen Exchange.

Swaps window with previous one on window list. See Bumpleft.

Swaps window with previous one on window list. See Bumpright.

Change c1 code processing. See Character Processing.

Change caption mode and string. See Regions.

Synonym to . See Multiuser Session.

Change character set slot designation. See Character Processing.

Change the current directory for future windows. See Chdir.

Treat ambiguous width characters as full/half width. See Character Processing.

Clear the window screen. See Clear.

Enter a command. See Colon.

Reorders window on window list, removing number gaps between them. See Collapse.

Simulate the screen escape key. See Command Character.

Selects compaction of trailing empty lines. See Scrollback.

Grab or ungrab console output. See Console.

Enter copy mode. See Copy.

Removed. Use instead. See Registers.

Select line break behavior for copying. See Line Termination.

Suppress/allow debugging output. See Debug.

Select default autonuke behavior. See Autonuke.

Select background color erase. See Character Processing.

Specify the default for generating breaks. See Break.

Select default c1 processing behavior. See Character Processing.

Change defaul character set slot designation. See Character Processing.

Select default window encoding. See Character Processing.

Set the default command and characters. See Command Character.

Select default flow control behavior. See Flow.

Select default GR processing behavior. See Character Processing.

Select default window hardstatus line. See Hardstatus.

Select default window logging behavior. See Log.

Select default utmp logging behavior. See Login.

Select default file mode for ptys. See Mode.

Select default activity monitoring behavior. See Monitor.

Select the default mouse tracking behavior. See Mousetrack.

Select default nonblock mode. See Nonblock.

Select default output buffer limit. See Obuflimit.

Set default lines of scrollback. See Scrollback.

Set the default program for new windows. See Shell.

Select default idle monitoring behavior. See Monitor.

Select the default inter-character timeout when pasting. See Paste.

Select default character encoding. See Character Processing.

Set default line-wrapping behavior. See Wrap.

Set default writelock behavior. See Multiuser Session.

Try to reconnect dead windows after timeout. See Zombie.

Disconnect from the terminal. See Detach.

Enter a digraph sequence. See Digraph.

Display terminal information. See Info.

List currently active user interfaces. See Displays.

Write the window’s termcap entry to a file. See Dump Termcap.

Display a message on startup. See Startup.

Set the encoding of a window. See Character Processing.

Set the command and characters. See Command Character.

Parse and execute each argument. See Eval.

Run a subprocess (filter). See Exec.

Change window size to current display size. See Window Size.

Set flow control behavior. See Flow.

Move focus to next region. See Regions.

Force the current region to a certain size. See Focusminsize.

Change GR charset processing. See Character Processing.

Change or show the group the current window belongs to. See Window Groups.

Write out the contents of the current window. See Hardcopy.

Append to hardcopy files. See Hardcopy.

Place, where to dump hardcopy files. See Hardcopy.

Use the hardware status line. See Hardware Status Line.

Set display height. See Window Size.

Display current key bindings. See Help.

Find previous command beginning …. See History.

Change the window’s hardstatus line. See Hardstatus.

Define a screen saver command. See Screen Saver.

Ignore character case in searches. See Searching.

Display window settings. See Info.

Removed, use instead. See Registers.

Destroy the current window. See Kill.

Redisplay the last message. See Last Message.

Create a layout. See Layout.

Delete a layout. See Layout.

Select the next layout. See Layout.

Select the previous layout. See Layout.

Jump to a layout. See Layout.

List the available layouts. See Layout.

Show or set the title of a layout. See Layout.

Show or set the number of a layout. See Layout.

Show or set which layout to reattach to. See Layout.

Remember the organization of a layout. See Layout.

Show or set the status of layout saving. See Layout.

Save the layout arrangement to a file. See Layout.

Display licensing information. See Startup.

Lock the controlling terminal. See Lock.

Log all output in the current window. See Log.

Place where to collect logfiles. See Log.

Log the window in . See Login.

Configure logfile time-stamps. See Log.

Use only the default mapping table for the next keystroke. See Bindkey Control.

Don’t try to do keymapping on the next keystroke. See Bindkey Control.

Set the inter-character timeout used for keymapping. See Bindkey Control.

Rebind keys in copy mode. See Copy Mode Keys.

Set the maximum window number. See Maxwin.

Insert the command character. See Command Character.

Monitor activity in window. See Monitor.

Enable selecting split regions with mouse clicks. See Mousetrack.

Set minimum message wait. See Message Wait.

Set default message wait. See Message Wait.

Go into single or multi user mode. See Multiuser Session.

Use -like error messages. See Nethack.

Switch to the next window. See Selecting.

Disable flow control to the current display. See Nonblock.|]

Change/display the current window’s number. See Number.

Select output buffer limit. See Obuflimit.

Kill all other regions. See Regions.

Switch to the window you were in last. See Selecting.

Set window to partial refresh. See Redisplay.

Set reattach password. See Detach.

Paste contents of paste buffer or registers somewhere. See Paste.

Include font information in the paste buffer. See Paste.

Close and Reopen the window’s terminal. See Break.

Detach and hang up. See Power Detach.

Set message displayed on . See Power Detach.

Switch to the previous window. See Selecting.

Set a command for VT printer port emulation. See Printcmd.

Treat a register as input to . See Registers.

Kill all windows and exit. See Quit.

Read the paste buffer from the screen-exchange file. See Screen Exchange.

Load a register from paste buffer or file. See Registers.

Redisplay the current window. See Redisplay.

Store a string to a register. See Registers.

Kill current region. See Regions.

Delete the screen-exchange file. See Screen Exchange.

Change text attributes in caption for flagged windows. See Rendition.

Reset the terminal settings for the window. See Reset.

Grow or shrink a region. See Resize.

Create a new window. See Screen Command.

Set size of scrollback buffer. See Scrollback.

Switch to a specified window. See Selecting.

Name this session. See Session Name.

Set an environment variable for new windows. See Setenv.

Controll process group creation for windows. See Setsid.

Set the default program for new windows. See Shell.

Set the default name for new windows. See Shell.

Monitor a window for inactivity. See Monitor.

Default timeout to trigger an inactivity notify. See Monitor.

Pause during startup. See Startup.

Slow down pasting in windows. See Paste.

Run commands from a file. See Source.

Deprecated. Use instead. See Rendition.

Split region into two parts. See Regions.

Display copyright notice on startup. See Startup.

Stuff a string in the input buffer of a window. See Paste.

Identify a user. See Multiuser Session.

Put session in background. See Suspend.

Set for new windows. See Term.

Tweak termcap entries for best performance. See Termcap Syntax.

Ditto, for terminfo systems. See Termcap Syntax.

Ditto, for both systems. See Termcap Syntax.

Display time and load average. See Time.

Set the name of the current window. See Title Command.

Synonym to . See Umask.

Unset all keybindings. See Bind.

Unset environment variable for new windows. See Setenv.

Select character encoding of the current window. See Character Processing.

Use visual bell. See Bell.

Set vbell message. See Bell.

Set delay for vbell message. See Bell.

Display version. See Version.

Write a message to all displays. See Multiuser Session.

Set the width of the window. See Window Size.

Present a list of all windows for selection. See Windowlist.

List active windows. See Windows.

Control line-wrap behavior. See Wrap.

Write paste buffer to screen-exchange file. See Screen Exchange.

Grant exclusive write permission. See Multiuser Session.

Send an XOFF character. See XON/XOFF.

Send an XON character. See XON/XOFF.

Define how screen treats zmodem requests. See Zmodem.

Keep dead windows. See Zombie.

6 New Window

This section describes the commands for creating a new window for running programs. When a new window is created, the first available number is assigned to it. The number of windows is limited at compile-time by the MAXWIN configuration parameter (which defaults to 40).

Chdir

Command: chdir[directory]

(none)
Change the current directory of to the specified directory or, if called without an argument, to your home directory (the value of the environment variable ). All windows that are created by means of the command from within or by means of or use this as their default directory. Without a command, this would be the directory from which was invoked. Hardcopy and log files are always written to the window’s default directory, not the current directory of the process running in the window. You can use this command multiple times in your to start various windows in different default directories, but the last value will affect all the windows you create interactively.

Screen Command

Command: screen[opts] [n] [cmd [args] ]

(, )
Establish a new window. The flow-control options (‘’, ‘’ and ‘’), title option (‘’), login options (‘’ and ‘’) , terminal type option (‘’), the all-capability-flag (‘’) and scrollback option (‘’) may be specified with each command. The option (‘’) turns monitoring on for this window. The option (‘’) turns output logging on for this window. If an optional number in the range 0…MAXWIN-1 is given, the window number is assigned to the newly created window (or, if this number is already in-use, the next available number). If a command is specified after , this command (with the given arguments) is started in the window; otherwise, a shell is created. If ‘’ is supplied, a container-type window is created in which other windows may be created inside it. See Window Groups.

Screen has built in some functionality of ‘’ and ‘’. See Window Types.

Thus, if your contains the lines

creates a shell window (in window #1) and a window with a TELNET connection to the machine foobar (with no flow-control using the title ‘’ in window #2) and will write a logfile ‘’ of the telnet session. If you do not include any commands in your file, then defaults to creating a single shell window, number zero. When the initialization is completed, switches to the last window specified in your .screenrc file or, if none, it opens default window #0.

Setenv

Command: setenvvar string

(none)
Set the environment variable to value . If only is specified, the user will be prompted to enter a value. If no parameters are specified, the user will be prompted for both variable and value. The environment is inherited by all subsequently forked shells.

Command: unsetenvvar

(none)
Unset an environment variable.

Shell

Command: shellcommand

Command: defshellcommand

(none)
Set the command to be used to create a new shell. This overrides the value of the environment variable . This is useful if you’d like to run a tty-enhancer which is expecting to execute the program specified in . If the command begins with a ‘’ character, the shell will be started as a login-shell. Typical shells do only minimal initialization when not started as a login-shell. E.g. Bash will not read your unless it is a login-shell.

is currently a synonym to the .screenrc command.

Command: shelltitletitle

(none)
Set the title for all shells created during startup or by the C-a C-c command. See Naming Windows, for details about what titles are.

Term

Command: termterm

(none)
In each window opens, it sets the variable to by default, unless no description for is installed in the local termcap or terminfo data base. In that case it pretends that the terminal emulator is ‘’. This won’t do much harm, as is VT/ANSI compatible. The use of the command is discouraged for non-default purpose. That is, one may want to specify special settings (e.g. vt) for the next command. Use the command rather than setting and resetting the default.

Window Types

Screen provides three different window types. New windows are created with ’s ‘’ command (see Screen Command). The first parameter to the ‘’ command defines which type of window is created. The different window types are all special cases of the normal type. They have been added in order to allow to be used efficiently as a console with or more windows.