And besides, the older I get (41) the more I can use frequent reminders of the things I used to know. It's disturbing the number of times I've searched the web for answers, and discovered an answer I wrote myself. And I hadn't known this could be easily turned off with 'stty' as suggested in another answer. Or maybe I did once know that?
i'm turning 30 this year, have been dealing with this issue for 15 years, and still mini-panic for about 2 seconds whenever i hit ctrl-s by accident. it's good to read about.
Being a windows developer who dabbles in linux I accidentally smack ctrl+s a dozen times a day when vimming. I've only just recently got used to to recovery mechanism:
Ctrl+q to recover the terminal, a stiff drink to recover my nerves.
From a comment above, I think you'll be able to put
stty -ixon -ixoff
in your .profile (or .bashrc or whatever) and ctrl+s/q won't be a problem anymore.
WELL HOW ESL&^H^HLSE ARE YOU GOING TO READ A 25+ LINE FILE OTHER THAN MASHING CTRLQ BEFORE THE LINES SCROLL OFF THE SCREEN? BY READING THRE AFTERGLOW? I SUPPOSE YOU`VE ASL^H^HSLO GOT A DIRECT CONNECT MODEMS WHERE YOU CAN`T EVEN HEAR WHAT`S GOING ON.
+++ATH...