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I miss being able to use Alt-B and Alt-F for backward and forward word in a Mac Terminal window (and any editor really).

Is there a way to enable them; currently they print the symbols ∫ƒ instead, which are not that useful to me.

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What version of OS X and what application? If Terminal.app, try Preferences -> Settings -> Keyboard. Make sure that Use option as meta key is checked. With that, in 10.6.5, ⌥F and ⌥B work as expected in Terminal.app, but print ƒ and ∫ in iTerm and elsewhere, as you have observed. Note that in other applications, ⌥→ and ⌥← can be used to jump words.

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Apple's list of keys is support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 which seems to be incomplete as it does not include ⌥→ and ⌥← but they do work – Mark Nov 14 '10 at 21:44
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"Use option as meta key" fixes it thanks. I'm using 10.6.5 – justinhj Nov 15 '10 at 16:02
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up vote -1 down vote

Try Control-F and Control-B. You can also use Control-A to jump to the start of the line and control-E to jump to the end

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What applications do ⌃F and ⌃B work in? – fideli Nov 14 '10 at 18:05
^B and ^f just move forward one character – Mark Nov 14 '10 at 21:41
Yes, that appears to be what justin was asking. ^f and ^b work in Terminal and Text edit at least. If he actually meant "backward and forward [a] word" then that wasn't what he needed. Sorry. Was it really as bad as -1? – Theo Belk Nov 15 '10 at 2:48
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