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Ask HN: Why CTRL+C and not CTRL+Z to kill ?

1 points by mdzkhan ↗ HN
Doesn't CTRL+C mean to halt a command, so why does most server documentations say CTRL+C to kill or stop ? Shouldn't it be CTRL+Z to kill ? Am I missing something here ?

3 comments

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HyprMusic
I always just presumed 'C' stood for cancel.
mcherm
If I recall correctly, CTRL-Z was the end-of-file marker on some OS (DOS?) so they used CTRL-C (for "cancel") instead. It then became a standard.
bonkabonka
Ctrl-Z in unix puts your app to sleep so you can background it or kill it via the `kill` command. I find on badly saturated connections (accidentally running a command that produces tons and tons of output) that I can often suspend a command more readily than I can interrupt it with Ctrl-C.