Though you have to be nested really deeply to do ~~~~~~~~~~~. - unlike some other escaping schemes, it only requires one extra tilde for every layer of nesting rather than doubling each time.

The worst problem is trying to figure out just how many layers deep you are. I was being a little ridiculous though.

"So, a totem. It's a small object, potentially heavy, something you can have on you all the time..."

I wonder... I reckon you could implement a totem inside GNU screen that kept track of how many ssh-sessions deep you were.

Not to be confused with: https://projects.gnome.org/totem/

Oops, yes. I was speaking about the Inception reference.

The Telnet Song from CACM, April 1984: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1040000/1035691/p347-steele.... Plain text at http://alcor.concordia.ca/~smw/home/telnet_song.html and no doubt elsewhere.

(This does not refer to the Unix version of telnet, which defaults to ^] as the default escape character.)

Thanks for the tip! I don't tend to nest sessions more than two deep but this could be useful for those who have deep nestings.