Short answer, terminals are built on the same technology as physical terminals from the 60s and 70s when controlling the flow of data from the server was a more useful feature.
Same reason there’s a ScrollLock key on keyboards. Didn’t always have scrollbars and if the application prints more than you can read, you want to pause that…
If you hit ctrl-s, ctrl-q will unfreeze
x👏off👏… x👏on👏… x👏off👏, x👏on👏…flowcontrol.
Interesting, why is that? Like what feature is that?
It’s part of the terminal emulator flow control
Short answer, terminals are built on the same technology as physical terminals from the 60s and 70s when controlling the flow of data from the server was a more useful feature.
Same reason there’s a ScrollLock key on keyboards. Didn’t always have scrollbars and if the application prints more than you can read, you want to pause that…
THAT’S WHAT IT’S FOR??
Now that I think about it, it does seem pretty obvious.