[__david__]

Not any telnet I've ever used. Telnet is ^] to get to the command prompt and then "quit". It even says so right when you connect:

    $ telnet google.com 80
    Trying 74.125.239.103...
    Connected to google.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.

[gpvos]

Apparently it's rsh, not telnet. The telnet manual does mention it though, since you can put telnet in a rsh-like mode where ~ does work. (May depend on telnet version.)

[peterwwillis]

Ah, my bad! Guess i'm older than I thought...

[hhw]

man 1 telnet on FreeBSD or OpenBSD contains: "When in rlogin mode, a line of the form ~. disconnects from the remote host; ~ is the telnet escape character. Similarly, the line ~^Z suspends the telnet session. The line ~^] escapes to the normal telnet escape prompt."

although on the Debian man page, it appears slightly differently as: "-r Emulate rlogin(1). In this mode, the default escape character is a tilde. Also, the interpretation of the escape character is changed: an escape character followed by a dot causes telnet to disconnect from the remote host. A ^Z instead of a dot suspends telnet, and a ^] (the default telnet escape character) generates a normal telnet prompt. These codes are accepted only at the beginning of a line. "

telnet is not installed by default on CentOS, but has the same man page as on Debian.