Using inputrc for key remapping

The keystrokes you type at a terminal session, and also those used in programs such as FTP, are processed by the readline library and can be configured. By default, the customization file is .inputrc in your home directory, which will be read during bash startup if it exists. You can configure a different file by setting the INPUTRC variable. If it is not set, .inputrc in your home directory will be used. Many systems have a default key mapping in /etc/inputrc, so you will normally want to include these using the $include directive.

for example you can bind your ls -lt to the Ctrl-t key combination (press and hold Ctrl, then press t). If you want the command to be executed with no parameters, add \n to the end of the configuration line.

You can force the INPUTRC file to be re-read again by pressing Ctrl-x then Ctrl-r. Note that some distributions will set INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc if you do not have your own .inputrc, so if you create one on such a system, you will need to log out and log back in to pick up your new definitions. Just resetting INPUTRC to null or to point to your new file will reread the original file, not the new specification.

Linuxart " Blog Archive " Super-useful inputrc

Super-useful inputrc
You either want to place the following in ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc… I've found that while ~/.inputrc works sometimes, it doesn't on all systems.

"\e[1~": beginning-of-line "\e[4~": end-of-line "\e[5~": beginning-of-history "\e[6~": end-of-history "\e[3~": delete-char "\e[2~": quoted-insert "\e[5C": forward-word "\e[5D": backward-word "\e\e[C": forward-word "\e\e[D": backward-word set completion-ignore-case On

All lines except the last enable nice readline & bash cursor movement (control + arrow keys and what not) while the last line turns on case insensitivity for tab-completion, enabling you to have folders and files of mixed case characters while not having to type the capital letters. (You can have a directory called "Documents" and tab-complete by tying "doc<tab>"

I've been enjoying the above for a while now, and I think it really should be the default settings for distributions.

Note: This works for Linux, Mac OS X, and *BSD. It might work for people using Bash on Windows, but you're on your own there. (:

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

20 Responses to "Super-useful inputrc"

Jürg Billeter October 13th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
With one change that's a very nice default configuration.

"\e[5~": history-search-backward
"\e[6~": history-search-forward

This maps Page Up / Page Down to the IMO very useful history search function. Configured like that by default in paldo.

Marius Gedminas October 13th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
If ~/.inputrc doesn't work, then you need to add

export INPUTRC=~/.inputrc

to your .bashrc/.bash_profile/wherever.

Colin Marquardt October 13th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
These should all be "quote-backslash-e…", right? The backslash is missing for me.

I have a few more variables set:

set bell-style visible
set expand-tilde on
set convert-meta off
set input-meta on
set output-meta on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set visible-stats on

Pádraig Brady October 14th, 2005 at 5:36 am
I acutally go the whole hog and do like 4dos used to.
I.E. have the up/down arrows do the search.
Note if you don't type anything the up/down arrow behave as before.
http://www.pixelbeat.org/settings/.inputrc

Wouter October 14th, 2005 at 9:13 am
Yes you need to escape with a \\ before the first e. Doesn't seem to work in my xterm (debian) though..

Anonymous October 14th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Works great in gnome-terminal; thanks!

I also tried to get Control-Backspace to do unix-filename-rubout, but unfortunately it seems that Control-Backspace doesn't look any differently from Backspace.

Holy Shmoly! :: Bash Fun - history and navigation October 15th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
[…] Super-useful inputrc enables you to CTRL-left and CTRL-right through your current command line, just like in the good ol' DOS days! […]

Francesco January 15th, 2006 at 9:56 am
for those who like the WinNT/XP way TAB works in MSDOS prompts (i.e. instead of showing a list of possible completions like bash does on default, TAB cycles through possible completions), just add this to .inputrc:

"\t": menu-complete

it saves me a lot of typing !!

Jason May 1st, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Anybody know how to make a shortcut so that way when i press "ctrl+a" or whatever letter, i can set it to do an action…i was told it was with the /etc/inputrc file, but i can't figure it out.

Triffid Hunter July 6th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
I had to add:
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
on my (gentoo linux) system for word search to work. A similar translation should apply nicely to the others.

micha September 2nd, 2006 at 8:31 pm
I noticed what appears to be a bug in readline. I'm using Terminal.app on tiger with bash, and doing 'set completion-ignore-case On' causes completion to break with directories that have spaces in the name. For example:

/home/micha/Documents/My Stuff/myfile.pdf

If, from /home/micha I do

ls documents/my\ [TAB]

it completes correctly to produce Documents/My\ Stuff/ but if I press tab again at that point it produces this:

ls Documents/My\\\ Stuff

which is wrong.

Will February 5th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Q: How does the value: "\e[3~": relate to the delete key?

A: "\e[3~" is the sequence of bytes that your terminal sends when the delete key is pressed. And when I say "terminal", I mean either a real serial terminal, or an xterm-like thing, or the Linux console driver.

Bryan Harris September 29th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Hi,

I think there is a man page, or an info page, or some kind of document in my system somewhere which tells me how the escape sequences work. Does anybody know where that file is at? I am using Slackware 12.0, and I thought I had seen that file before.

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