shell font changed...!!!

[vikyrulz]

hi guys,

I am a newbie in linux... I came across extremely astounding situation..
I ran a command


cat /usr/bin/totem


This changed the font of my shell... Dunno whats the bug... U guys might wanna try dis.. I am still trying to restore my "ENGLISH" font...:(

[scxtt]

U guys might wanna try dis
why would you (suggest to others to) cat a binary (i.e. non-text) file?
there's no sense in doing it ... and what it does to the terminal isn't permanent ...

[vikyrulz]

yes its not permanent... Juz wanted u guys to have a look at it... when i said font changed.. i meant about the shell itself.. So, I guess there is some bug in it.. i dunno wats happening :-D

[scxtt]

it's not a "bug", there's no reason to cat a binary file via the shell ...

[vikyrulz]

hmm... fine.. I know there is no reason to do this...

But, why is shell's font changing??? Why isn't it plain english language :D.. According to my knowledge cat should have no effect on it...

can sum1 please explain the reason behind it...

P.S.: I completely understand there is no need to cat a Binary file...

[16777216]

cat is just trying to interprit the binary code of the file to ascii and/or unicode ( or what ever encoding you are using ) thus showing the international and extended charters.

[scxtt]

use strings if you want to see if there's any ascii text in a binary file ...

[edammy]

Run the following command on shell:
echo -e '\017'

That should fix it

[edammy]

The binary file had a shift-out (016) character. Pushing
a shift-in character resets the character set.