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I would like to know how to remap some of the default keys for x-term.

Specifically I would like to remap the Cntrl+leftArrow and Cntrl+rightArrow keys to move a word forward or backwards. I would also like to remap Alt+leftArrow and Alt+rightArrow keys to move to the start and the end of a line.

I have managed to install and get rxvt keys remapped by editing the .inputrc however I believe that x-term does not use this file. I think I need to edit the ~.Xresources file and edit the VT00 translations but I don't really understand how the values for corresponding key mappings work.

Thanks for your help

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1 Answer

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Instead of remapping the keys (presumably to Ctrl+A and some such), and thereby making them indistinguishable from the combinations they're mapped to, you can bind their keycodes in the readline configuration file ~/.inputrc, like so:

"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[1;3C": end-of-line
"\e[1;3D": beginning-of-line
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My issue is that I have added this declaration to .intputrc, which works for rxvt however doesn't for x-term. – Graham Nov 27 '11 at 22:57
Rxvt uses different keycodes for modified arrow keys than xterm does. So do try the bindings I showed there. – ak2 Nov 28 '11 at 0:54
Different terminals use different values for keycodes! Is this because they try to emulate different types of old fashioned terminals? How are you supposed to find out about these values? – Graham Nov 28 '11 at 16:55
This worked, bit would you be able to answer my previous question. – Graham Nov 28 '11 at 22:38
I think that's a good question for unix.stackexchange.com. – ak2 Nov 29 '11 at 5:32

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