How can I get control+left arrow to go back one word in iTerm2?

Question

I was reading up in the Linux manual and I noticed that it said I could use control+left and control+right to move forward and back words in the terminal while editing.

"Pressing Ctrl plus the Left or Right arrow key moves backward or forward a word at a time, as does pressing Esc and then B or F."

On OS X control+left and control+right normally control spaces. I have disabled those. I also tried to use the preferences pane to set the keyboard shortcuts:

However this does not work and causes this error:

Also, if I am in iTerm and use alt+escape then B or F the character moves back and forth. This was happening before any of my config changes. But I'd really like to be able to use control + the arrow keys.

Answer 1

Just add the following to ~/.inputrc:

"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[1;5C": forward-word

See here for some more explanation. If you want to use the alt key instead for word-to-word movement (like default OS X behavior), use:

"\e[1;9D": backward-word
"\e[1;9C": forward-word

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Why is this? You've set up your profile to use the Xterm defaults:

This is why you'll need to "catch" this sequence and tell readline what to do.