Bizarre terminal behavior

[Mark Widdicombe]

On 8 December 2011 10:37, Patton Echols <p.echols at comcast.net> wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> Tonight I opened a terminal session and used [ctrl]+r to search a prior
> command. When I keyed the first letter, the terminal window was filled with
> the characters below. I had to [ctrl]+c to return to normal usage. Any
> thoughts?
>
> Oh, 10.4, on an asus netbook
>
> Here is the characters copied and pasted from the terminal window:
>
> patton at mycroft:~$
> (reverse-i-search)`a': �^P�<��(�̤�{9]��xmh�^Ni���Q^Q@**}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}�
> � xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� � xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}�
> xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� � xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}�
> xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� � xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}� xxmh�^Ni���Q^Q@}�
> �

<snip>
Was the last command to edit (with vi, say) a binary file?
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