Windows: Pressing Ctrl + W (or ^W) or Ctrl + Backspace does nothing.

[jens1o]

System

Operating System	Windows
Binary Version	0.3.3

Summary

Pressing Ctrl + W (or ^W) or Ctrl + Backspace does nothing.

Behavior

The last word is not removed from shell. Instead, ^W is written to the output.

Expectation

Remove the last word instead.

[chrisduerr]

Which shell? If ^W is written to the stdin of the shell, it seems like everything is working as intended.

[jens1o]

Powershell, but I expected it - like in the linux word - to just remove the last word?

[chrisduerr]

Powershell, but I expected it - like in the linux word - to just remove the last word?

This is something that Bash does for you, it's not something the terminal emulator provides. We just tell it what key has been sent.

So if it doesn't work in cmd/powershell, it won't work in Alacritty either.

[davidhewitt]

crtl+w works perfectly for me with Powershell core preview 7.0.0-preview.5 . Both in Alacritty and the native terminal.

The builtin Windows powershell is... old! 😄

[chrisduerr]

Oh yeah, that's definitely a factor too. And cmd.exe is even older and supports even less unix-y features. But generally if the shell supports it, Alacritty shouldn't be stopping things from working properly. And if you can see ^W, that's a good sign that things should work.

[Sl-L]

I'm having the same issue, but Ctrl + Backspace works in cmd but not in alacritty

[vimsux]

Ctrl-Backspace does not work for me for either the PowerShell v5.1 (Win10 default) or v7.1.4
It does not print anything, just deletes a single character.

[dominicpalmer]

Issue is still present. Ctrl+W and Ctrl+Backspace are printing "^W" to stdin via Alacritty, but from a Powershell window the same commands delete a word backwards - the intended result.

[maxreuben]

In alacritty, at least in Linux, the keybinding for delete previous word is Alt+Backspace, not Ctrl+Backspace. It'd be nice if there was a way to switch that though. If anyone knows how to, please let us know.

[arclaxton]

On my system, powershell would delete words when I pressed ctrl+backspace but not ctrl+w.
Alacritty had no problem relaying the ctrl+w sequence (which my powershell did nothing with) but ctrl+backspace from alacritty only deleted a single character.

I was able to teach powershell about ctrl+w by adding the following to my profile.ps1:
Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Chord ctrl+w -Function BackwardDeleteWord
Now I can delete words using powershell with alacritty. I think it is still an issue that ctrl+backspace works in plain PS but not from alacritty, but I am happy using the bash-flavored shortcut.

[tahir-hassan]

To bind Control-BackSpace to End-of-Transmission-Block

I got this solution from microsoft/terminal#755:

  - { key: Back, mods: Control, chars: "\u0017" }

This works in both PowerShell, and when you launch Neovim too.

You can use vtshowkeys on Termux to find the keybindings btw.

Other useful PowerShell-related Key-bindings

  - { key: Space, mods: Control, chars: "\u0000" }
  - { key: Back, mods: Control, chars: "\u0017" }
  - { key: Home, mods: Shift, chars: "\x1b[1;2H" }
  - { key: End, mods: Shift, chars: "\x1b[1;2F" }