GNU Readline is a library for command line edition, used by bash and some other programs
130
votes
3answers
68k views
How to unfreeze after accidentally pressing Ctrl-S in a terminal?
It's a situation that has happened quite often to me: after I press (with a different intention) Ctrl-S in a terminal, the interaction (input or output) with it is frozen. It's probably a kind of ...
15
votes
1answer
608 views
Execute a readline function without keybinding?
I was just reading the readline man-page and disovered a bunch of great commands I didn't know about. However, several don't have default key bindings. Is there a way to execute the unbound commands ...
10
votes
2answers
4k views
How to remove last part of a path in bash? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How to delete part of a path in an interactive shell?
Is there a short-cut in bash that lets you delete the last part of a path?
Example: /usr/local/bin should become ...
9
votes
8answers
13k views
How do I install a PHP CLI with a usable interactive prompt on Debian Wheezy?
When I install php5-cli on Debian Wheezy (currently testing), the interactive prompt is very unusable due to missing readline support (bug 341868). What's the easiest way to install a version linked ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Alt-Left to skip words does not work in terminal emulators
On a Debian Wheezy machine at previous job, I got used to Alt+Left and Alt+Right to skip between words on active command-line (in bash).
However, since at home I have upgraded to Jessie (Debian 8.0, ...
9
votes
5answers
815 views
How to repeat currently typed in parameter on bash console?
I was just typing something along the lines of:
mv foo/bar/poit/zoid/narf.txt
and suddenly realized, damn, I have to type large parts of that parameter again
mv foo/bar/poit/zoid/narf.txt ...
8
votes
1answer
691 views
What is the general format of keyname for key bindings in “inputrc” file?
I understand that the format for key bindings in inputrc file is:
keyname: function-name or macro
For keyname, I saw things like:
"\e[B"
"\e[1~"
"\e[5D"
"\M-l"
"\C-[OD"
"\e\e[D"
What is the ...
7
votes
3answers
4k views
Where do I find a list of terminal key codes to remap shortcuts in bash?
For example:
"\e[1;5C"
"\e[Z"
"\e-1\C-i"
I only know bits and pieces, like \e stands for escape and C- for Ctrl, but what are these numbers (1) and letters (Z)? What are the ;, [ and - signs for?
...
7
votes
3answers
3k views
Configure up-arrow to browse through commands with same initial characters rather than all previous commands
On the bash command-line, ↑ gives me the previous command. On the command-lines in numpy or matlab, when I type a few characters, ↑ gives me the previously entered command starting with those ...
7
votes
1answer
4k views
Delete whole argument in current bash command-line
Using ^W (unix-word-rubout) I can easily delete a single "word" from the current command in my bash shell.
However, when dealing with quoted arguments that contain spaces (or unquoted arguments ...
7
votes
1answer
393 views
What are the readline word separators?
When I delete a "word" in Bash, it will stop at certain characters like _ and /. For example, if I type
/foo/bar
and activate backward-kill-word (typically mapped to Alt-Backspace and/or Ctrl-w), ...
6
votes
1answer
2k views
.inputrc TAB not behaving as expected
I'm on a roll today, here's another question:
How come when I put these into .inputrc, they both do the same thing?
TAB: menu-complete
Shift-TAB: menu-complete-reverse
i.e. they both do whatever ...
5
votes
2answers
3k views
Reading character by character with bash read
I've been trying to use bash to read a file character by character.
After much trial and error, I have discovered that this works:
exec 4<file.txt
declare -i n
while read -r ch <&4;
...
5
votes
3answers
748 views
How do I switch to vi editing mode in readline?
I want to switch to vi editing mode in a readline environment. But I don't want to use 'set -o vi'. I want to temporarily switch using a keyboard shortcut. The man page says I can do this with ...
5
votes
2answers
697 views
Setting readline variables in the shell
I read in the man page, that you set readline parameters on an off or to a value by using
set var value
Is this the same as the set builtin, and how do you set the variables once inputrc has already ...
5
votes
1answer
140 views
Highlighting text in bash when using reverse history search using Ctrl-R
Using Ctrl-R, I can search the history in bash.
But what to do, If I want to highlight the relevant word which has been typed upon by me.
Example:
(reverse-i-search)`mount': sudo mount /dev/sda2 ...
5
votes
3answers
988 views
Change $TERMINFO in bashrc script
I'm trying to set TERMINFO="$HOME/.terminfo" within my .bashrc script. The reason being is that my terminal isn't in the system terminfo location, and so I have its terminfo file in my home directory.
...
5
votes
1answer
432 views
history list in bash always truncated to 5000 lines at new login
Similar to the 5000 line limitation problem when first thing in .bashrc I have
export HISTSIZE=10001
and
export HISTFILESIZE=$HISTSIZE
My users do not have ~/.inputrc files and the system-wide ...
4
votes
3answers
912 views
Ctrl-a does not take me to the beginning of the prompt while I am working within a GNU screen
To navigate to the starting and end of a command, I usually use Ctrla and Ctrle.
However, when I work within a GNU screen, those keybinding do not work becuase perhaps they are being used by the GNU ...
4
votes
1answer
1k views
How do you configure .inputrc so ALT+UP has the effect of cd
It should be possible to do that by having ALT+UP generate consecutive keyboard input equivalent to cdspace..ENTER by means of a macro definition. But can't figure out how exactly to do it.
4
votes
2answers
105 views
Where does the yanked text on commadline get stored?
When you delete characters on the command line using readline commands (e.g. Ctrl-U, you can paste using Ctrl-y, but where does it get stored? It does not seem to use X11 clipboard at all.
4
votes
1answer
194 views
read with history
How can I make the builtin read command support history, by pressing the up/down key to cycle through them?
I've tried catching when you press the up key, however it doesn't seem to work with read:
...
4
votes
1answer
296 views
Why is Vim eating up Ctrl when used with Ctrl+v and how to fix it?
I'm using Vim /etc/zsh/zshrc to add key bindings for zsh because it doesn't work with inputrc. In my terminal with tmux when I type Ctrl+v then Ctrl+LeftArrow the shell will show ^[OD. However, when ...
4
votes
1answer
976 views
bash readline: Key binding that executes an external command
(Background: I'm a long-time tcsh user, gradually transitioning to bash, and trying to find equivalents for some useful tcsh-specific features.)
In tcsh, I can define a key binding that executes an ...
4
votes
2answers
251 views
How to print keyboard shortcuts in human-readable form?
It would be very useful to have a user-friendly way to get an overview of the currently defined keyboard shortcuts. In other words, given the /etc/inputrc lines
"\e[A": history-search-backward
...
4
votes
3answers
627 views
Put text in the bash command line buffer
I would like to programmatically put a certain piece of text in the command line buffer of bash, read to be edited and used as a command.
What I am looking forward to is something similar to read -i ...
4
votes
0answers
48 views
Remap Return key in terminal to prevent accidental command on productions servers
I am looking for a way to remap the key for executing commands in terminal (I am using bash) to prevent accidental commands on productions servers. Return should be disabled.
I tried the following ...
4
votes
1answer
67 views
Deleting input forward to the next space
When in terminal I can use Ctrl+w to delete a whole word or IP (. is separator for each octet) when going leftward of prompt. However, if I try Alt+d to go rightward of prompt, terminal recognizes "." ...
4
votes
2answers
23 views
Is it possible to (re)define what readline (embedded in bash) defines as a word?
Many of the special Readline constructs allow the user to edit
the command line in various ways. For instance, certain keystrokes
allow moving forward a word. A word is defined to be what Bash
itself ...
3
votes
4answers
704 views
Shell: How do I get the last argument the previous command when it was detached?
Within the shell, typing ALT+. or using !$ recalls the last passed argument of the previous command. I use this all the time, but how do you do that when you detached the previous command?
$ ...
3
votes
2answers
161 views
Why do different terminals have different values for keys in the .inputrc file?
This question really started from here. I would like to know why different terminals like rxvt and xterm use different values when mapping key combinations? Whilst I am in rxvt or xterm how can I find ...
3
votes
1answer
624 views
How to change readline's/bash's meta key?
Readline/bash use the meta key quite often but it only works when I use the Esc-key for it.
How can I configure bash/readline to accept a different key as meta?
3
votes
1answer
279 views
Using shell's read command with live editing functionality (readline like)
Is there a standard (POSIX) way of asking the user some data from within a shell script, with read for example, while allowing live edition of the text being typed (what readline does)?
I know bash ...
3
votes
1answer
98 views
Mapping character keys
I really don't understand bash's use of control characters. I understand simple things like adding colors with escape sequences but am at a loss for how to do things like bind keys in .inputrc.
For ...
3
votes
1answer
263 views
What are the bash shell length limitations for here-docs?
What are the length limitations for using here-docs as part of bash command lines? I am finding that short here-docs work fine, but when they get longer there is some point or structure after which ...
3
votes
1answer
277 views
Dealing with GNU Stow conflicts
What is the recommended way of dealing with GNU Stow conflicts?
I tried to stow readline-6.2 and got the following warning:
> stow readline-6.2
Loading defaults from /home/josh/.stowrc
WARNING! ...
3
votes
1answer
429 views
How race conditions affect reads and writes (that happen at the same time)
Let's say I open a file a for reading. What if an application, let's call it aWriter writes to this file in random intervals. Are there any possibilities of me receiving improper file contents if I ...
3
votes
1answer
113 views
Control-p freezes SSH session
I have encountered a strange situation on one of my SSH ARM machines I use on a daily basis. Every time I connect to the server and press Ctrl+P to invoke previous-history BASH function SSH connection ...
3
votes
2answers
580 views
Resuming screen with UTF8 enabled breaks character input
Overview of UTF8 screen re-attachment issues.
Problem:
Creating a screen that uses UTF8 works perfectly until re-attaching said screen session.
Steps:
ssh remothost
screen -U -S ttytter
[detach ...
2
votes
2answers
859 views
Cannot enter a forward slash character when logging in via ssh
When I ssh into one of our servers, I cannot enter a forward slash character, which makes it difficult to do pretty much anything (like ls /). How can I get the forward slash to work?
Some ...
2
votes
1answer
408 views
VI mode in freetalk
I somehow managed to get my freetalk into vi-mode. I'm just unsure how I did it (if I restart freetalk I get an emacs-mode).
Anyone an idea?
2
votes
2answers
236 views
Why does Bash readline sometimes try to parse the second word of a command out of context?
I recently migrated all my dotfiles and setting to a new laptop running Ubuntu 13.04, and have been noticing a strange behavior that I've never seen before. Essentially, it seems like my terminal is ...
2
votes
2answers
211 views
Is it possible to assign multiple commands to a single hotkey? (bash, xterm)
Back in the day, if my cursor was in the middle of a really long shell command I'd just hit Ctrl+C to get myself a new command prompt.
Then I learned about Ctrl+K/C and life was good. Unfortunately ...
2
votes
2answers
71 views
xinput - Ctrl+<Left> misbehaves if history-search-backward is mapped
I am using these lines in my ~/.inputrc:
"\e[5~": history-search-backward
"\e[6~": history-search-forward
With these settings when I type c on the prompt and do a PageUp, bash only shows command ...
2
votes
3answers
99 views
Ctrl+W in vi[m] to erase to whitespace
I want to mimic the functionality of bash readline in vim. Is there an easy way to do that?
Currently in vim Ctrl+W "cuts" from cursor back to special char or whitespace.
ie. In bash Ctrl+W "cuts" ...
2
votes
1answer
469 views
readline: unix-word-rubout, but backwards, is it possible?
I'm trying to set up my .inputrc to perform a backwards unix-word-rubout but I'm currently failing at doing so.
I have M-w mapped in my .inputrc.
this does not work:
"\eu": universal-argument
"\ew": ...
2
votes
2answers
55 views
How do I swap the two last command line arguments?
$ ln -s ./dir/target.txt /path/to/source.txt{cursor here}
How do swap file typed filenames in command line? Alt+T swaps words, not filenames, resulting in ln -s ./dir/target.txt /path/to/txt.source.
...
2
votes
1answer
255 views
bash not reading $TERMINFO on login (over SSH)
I have a OpenVZ Fedora 20 VPS that when I SSH into, my termcap file stored in $XDG_DATA_HOME/terminfo/x/xterm-termite, isn't being read, despite having TERMINFO=$XDG_DATA_HOME/terminfo set. If I ...
2
votes
1answer
376 views
Logging interactive input and output without capturing all typed input and control characters
I am trying to log output from an interactive command-line program; units, specifically.
I have tried using tee like this:
units | tee units.log
or script like this:
script -c units units.log
...
2
votes
3answers
367 views
How to read '\n' into variable with Bash's built-in command?
Somehow I'm not able to read the trailing \n sign into the REPLY variable. Under any circumstances I want to avoid a blank line that results from the \n being echoed by read but echo one in case of ...
