When you type a command, the first process that interprets it is the
character-device driver.
The driver that you use depends on your hardware; for more information, see
the entries for the devc-* character I/O drivers in the Utilities Reference.
Note:
Some keys may behave differently from how they're described here, depending on
how you configure your system.
Input modes
Character-device drivers run in either raw input mode, or canonical (or edited input) mode.
Terminal support
Some programs, such as vi, need to know just what your terminal can do, so that they can move the cursor, clear the screen, and so on. The TERM environment variable indicates the type of terminal that you're using, and the /usr/lib/terminfo directory is the terminal database.
Telnet
If you're using telnet to communicate between two QNX machines (QNX 4, QNX Neutrino), use the -8 option to enable an eight-bit data path. If you're connecting to a BlackBerry 10 OS box from some other operating system, and the terminal isn't behaving properly, quit from telnet and start it again with the -8 option.
The keyboard at a glance
The table below describes how the character-device drivers interpret various keys and keychords (groups of keys that you press simultaneously). The drivers handle these keys as soon as you type them.