Home and End keys don't work in putty + vim + xterm

Question

I'm using putty to ssh to Ubuntu with TERM=xterm-256color.

Inside vim, the home and end keys are not working properly. "Home" key makes vim enter in "Insert" mode and put a 'w' character. Similarly "End" key makes vim enter in "Insert" mode before putting a 'q' character.

The keys work fine outside vim. Home and End key puts the cursor at the beginning of the line or end of the line.

Also, this does not happen when I log in with TERM=linux set. Home and End keys inside vim function properly then.

Answer 1

Finally. After hours of scouring the internet I stumbled upon something which I should've done much earlier.

Fixed it by checking "Disable application keypad mode" inside Terminal -> Features in PuTTY configuration. Answering it now for anyone who faces this problem.

Answer 2

Using export TERM=putty-256color solved my case for Ubuntu 20 with Putty.

Source: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/4809

Answer 3

I got this behavior when I changed to screen-256color or tmux-256color, so I didn't want to change my terminfo.

If you like me are happy with your TERM setting you can also do a quick fix to reconfigure and as follows:

:set <Home>=<press Ctrl-V><press Home>
:set <End>=<press Ctrl-V><press End>

Above set <Home>= is a literal text you input, while the rest is what you press on your keyboard. Pressing Ctrl-V+Key adds the literal characters that result from pressing a key.

Trial and then add the above commands to your .vimrc to make the change permanent. You can also test the TERM variable:

if $TERM =~ '\v^(screen|tmux).*'
  set <Home>=^[OH
  set <End>=^[OF
endif

Above the \[ is a single character, which won't work to copy-paste directly.