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copy

Default Keybindings

  • C-a [
  • C-a C-[
  • C-a esc

Syntax

  • copy

Description

Enter copy/scrollback mode. This allows you to copy text from the current window and its history into the paste buffer. In this mode a vi-like 'full screen editor' is active:

Movement keys

h, j, k, l
move the cursor line by line or column by column.
0, ^ and $
move to the leftmost column, to the first or last non-whitespace character on the line, respectively.
H, M and L
move the cursor to the leftmost column of the top, center or bottom line of the window, respectively.
+ and -
positions one line up and down.
G
moves to the specified absolute line (default: end of buffer).
|
moves to the specified absolute column.
w, b, e
move the cursor word by word.
B, E
move the cursor WORD by WORD (as in vi).
C-u and C-d
scroll the display up/down by the specified amount of lines while preserving the cursor position. (Default: half screen-full).
C-b and C-f
scroll the display up/down a full screen.
g
moves to the beginning of the buffer.
%
jumps to the specified percentage of the buffer.

Note: emacs style movement keys can be customized by a .screenrc command. (E.g. markkeys “h=^B:l=^F:$=^E”) There is no simple method for a full emacs-style keymap, as this involves multi-character codes.

Marking

The copy range is specified by setting two marks. The text between these marks will be highlighted. Press space to set the first or second mark respectively.

Y and y
used to mark one whole line or to mark from start of line.
W
marks exactly one word.

Repeat count

Any of these commands can be prefixed with a repeat count number by pressing digits 0..9 which is taken as a repeat count.

Example: “C-a C-[ H 10 j 5 Y” will copy lines 11 to 15 into the paste buffer.

Searching

/
Vi-like search forward.
?
Vi-like search backward.
C-a s
Emacs style incremental search forward.
C-r
Emacs style reverse i-search.

Specials

There are however some keys that act differently than in vi. vi does not allow one to yank rectangular blocks of text, but screen does. Press c or C to set the left or right margin respectively. If no repeat count is given, both default to the current cursor position.

Example: Try this on a rather full text screen: “C-a [ M 20 l SPACE c 10 l 5 j C SPACE”.

This moves one to the middle line of the screen, moves in 20 columns left, marks the beginning of the paste buffer, sets the left column, moves 5 columns down, sets the right column, and then marks the end of the paste buffer.

Now try: “C-a [ M 20 l SPACE 10 l 5 j SPACE” and notice the difference in the amount of text copied.

J
joins lines. It toggles between 4 modes: lines separated by a newline character (012), lines glued seamless, lines separated by a single whitespace and comma separated lines. Note that you can prepend the newline character with a carriage return character, by issuing a “crlf on”.
v
is for all the vi users with “:set numbers” - it toggles the left margin between column 9 and 1.
a
press before the final space key to toggle in append mode. Thus the contents of the paste buffer will not be overwritten, but is appended to.
A
toggles in append mode and sets a (second) mark.
>
sets the (second) mark and writes the contents of the paste buffer to the screen-exchange file (/tmp/screen-exchange per default) once copy-mode is finished. This example demonstrates how to dump the whole scrollback buffer to that file: “C-A [ g SPACE G $ >”.
C-g
gives information about the current line and column.
x
exchanges the first mark and the current cursor position. You can use this to adjust an already placed mark.
@
does nothing. Does not even exit copy mode.

All keys not described here exit copy mode.

Examples

None yet.

See Also


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