> I've been experiencing a weird and recuring problem > in my debian system: > When a program fails to read a data file for example, > or somhow abnormally exits, the terminal starts to > use some weird charset, and becomes unreadable. That, > of course, affects only one terminal or xterm. > > My question is: How do I restore normal charset at > (I guess stdout) ? Others have already mentioned reset, but I have a simpler method. I have a '^O' (control-O) at the beginning of my prompt ($PS1). This automatically changes the charset back as soon as my prompt starts to print.