• C-a [
• C-a C-[
• C-a esc

• copy

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:

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.

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.

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.

/

Vi-like search forward.

?

Vi-like search backward.

C-a s

Emacs style incremental search forward.

C-r

Emacs style reverse i-search.

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.

None yet.

• markkeys
• Text Exchange