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What's the difference between ^C and ^D for UNIX/Mac OS X terminal?

Fresh7 days ago
Mar 15, 2026111827 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

When I try to stop something, I use and sometimes in terminal. What's the difference between the two? Why some program doesn't respond to , but . Why the Terminal.app just quits when I use ?

Error Output

^C

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1 Fix

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New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: What's the difference between ^C and ^D for UNIX/Mac OS X terminal?

Low Risk

CtrlC tells the terminal to send a to the current foreground process, which by default translates into terminating the application. CtrlD tells the terminal that it should register a EOF on standard input, which bash interprets as a desire to exit.

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