Recovering from a terminal full of gibberish

Submitted by John on Wed, 2010-03-17 17:10

Have you ever accidentally tried to view a binary file and your terminal started spewing all sorts of weird characters?

$ cat /etc/localtime
???w?qˈ???#?p?a???u??@???U?? ???5?????????????
???s??ޗ?ݩ?p޾y?߉rp??[??iTp?~=??I6p?^?
      pa
?p@?0?p?'? ?p ??
?p
  ???
?u???????t??tyV?iVY8?I89?)"7?p???p?????p?܀??p v!??p"U?#j??$5?%J??&?'*??'?р)
p???q5?ro??s?tO??t??v8?pv?πx?px???y?hpz???{?Jp|~u?}?,p~^W??GәI
                                                                           ????????LMTCDTCSTESTCWTCPT
CST6CDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0
▒⎼±␋⎺⎻␊#

The solution is to type reset and hit return.

▒⎼±␋⎺⎻␊# ⎼␊⎽␊├
Erase set to backspace.
$

There. All better.

Topic: 
FreeBSD