Problem with readline (command line editing)

[Cameron Simpson]

On 01Dec2011 01:38, suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux at gmail.com> wrote:
| Suddenly today I noticed several of the readline bindings are not
| working any more. I have not made any customisations either through
| ~/.inputrc or through bind statements in my ~/.bashrc. I have tried
| rebooting, logging in as a freshly created user. Neither of them helped.
| 
| To illustrate my issues, neither of the following work:
| 
| 1. forward-word            -  M-f
| 2. backward-word           -  M-b
| 3. forward-search-history  -  C-s
| 4. yank-nth-arg            -  M-C-y
| 5. yank-last-arg           -  M-.
| 6. transpose-words         -  M-t
| 7. upcase-word             -  M-u
| 8. backward-kill-word      -  M-<DEL>
| 9. kill-word               -  M-d
| 
| While compiling the above list I realised its all the keybindings with
| the Alt (meta) key. Any ideas what went wrong?

Might your terminal emulator settings have changed?

Possibilities:

  Alt and Meta are actually distinct keys in the X11 keyboard model;
  this association may have been changed.

  Terminal emulators choose to associate Alt and Meta too. Maybe your
  terminal emulator config has changed.

  Ctrl-S is "XOFF" - cease output - when flow control is on on a
  terminal/serial device (and terminals _are_ serial devices:-).
  Readline probably turns this off, but may not. If Ctrl-S doesn't
  prevent other typing, you can probably ignore this idea.

Check your newly created user - be sure there is no default .inputrc.
And isn't there a system wide inputrc, maybe in /etc?

Check that you're using "emacs" command line editing; bash may only
offer that, but zsh at least has a "vi" mode command line editing
as well, which would break the mappings you expect.

Do other readline capable programs also fail?

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Dangerous stuff, science.  Lots of us not fit for it.
        - H.C. Bailey, _The Long Dinner_