(written by Frank Neumann)
Once in a while, it may happen to you that you try to read a binary file. Text viewers like more will interpret the input they get as control characters, to for instance change to an alternate character set. This may result in a strange looking prompt, made up of special characters. In such a case, you need to reset the terminal to its initial state. There are several ways to do this, here's what I use: You have to type (blindly):
echo ^V^O |
Read this as: Control-V, Control-O. The sequence "Control-O" does just what we want: It resets the text attributes and character set, and also clears the screen. You have to mask the control character with Control-V, otherwise the shell would directly try to use the "Control-O" for its purposes.
Control-V Esc c is another useful sequence that does a more complete reset of the console (but you usually won't need to use it).
You can also avoid this problem by using less or most instead of more; both of these pagers are available in Debian. Be sure to set up a PAGER environment variable (in your .cshrc or .bashrc) so programs like man use your preferred pager instead.