Alt-Left/Right and Home/End don't work and prevent alacritty from closing

[spacecowboy]

Not sure what's up but Alt-Left, Alt-Right, Home, and End do not work as expected.

For example: hitting Alt-Left will make the terminal flash and then type a literal D.

However hitting Alt-b works and does the config suggets Alt-Left should do. Issue with escaping somehow?

Even weirder is that after I try any of those "faulty" shortcuts typing exit does not quit the terminal and the entire program seems to freeze. It's not even possible to close the window by hitting the "X" in the corner. I have to manually kill the process.

Config is pretty much default:

key_bindings:
  - { key: V,        mods: Shift|Control, action: Paste                        }
  - { key: C,        mods: Shift|Control, action: Copy                         }
  - { key: Home,                    chars: "\x1b[H",   mode: ~AppCursor  }
  - { key: Home,                    chars: "\x1b[1~",  mode: AppCursor   }
  - { key: End,                     chars: "\x1b[F",   mode: ~AppCursor  }
  - { key: End,                     chars: "\x1b[4~",  mode: AppCursor   }
  - { key: PageUp,                  chars: "\x1b[5~"                     }
  - { key: PageDown,                chars: "\x1b[6~"                     }
  - { key: Left,     mods: Shift,   chars: "\x1b[1;2D"                   }
  - { key: Left,     mods: Control, chars: "\x1b[1;5D"                   }
  - { key: Left,     mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b[1;3D"                   }
  - { key: Left,                    chars: "\x1b[D",   mode: ~AppCursor  }
  - { key: Left,                    chars: "\x1bOD",   mode: AppCursor   }
  - { key: Right,    mods: Shift,   chars: "\x1b[1;2C"                   }
  - { key: Right,    mods: Control, chars: "\x1b[1;5C"                   }
  - { key: Right,    mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b[1;3C"                   }
  - { key: Right,                   chars: "\x1b[C",   mode: ~AppCursor  }
  - { key: Right,                   chars: "\x1bOC",   mode: AppCursor   }
  - { key: Up,       mods: Shift,   chars: "\x1b[1;2A"                   }
  - { key: Up,       mods: Control, chars: "\x1b[1;5A"                   }
  - { key: Up,       mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b[1;3A"                   }
  - { key: Up,                      chars: "\x1b[A",   mode: ~AppCursor  }
  - { key: Up,                      chars: "\x1bOA",   mode: AppCursor   }
  - { key: Down,     mods: Shift,   chars: "\x1b[1;2B"                   }
  - { key: Down,     mods: Control, chars: "\x1b[1;5B"                   }
  - { key: Down,     mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b[1;3B"                   }
  - { key: Down,                    chars: "\x1b[B",   mode: ~AppCursor  }
  - { key: Down,                    chars: "\x1bOB",   mode: AppCursor   }
  - { key: F1,                      chars: "\x1bOP"                      }
  - { key: F2,                      chars: "\x1bOQ"                      }
  - { key: F3,                      chars: "\x1bOR"                      }
  - { key: F4,                      chars: "\x1bOS"                      }
  - { key: F5,                      chars: "\x1b[15~"                    }
  - { key: F6,                      chars: "\x1b[17~"                    }
  - { key: F7,                      chars: "\x1b[18~"                    }
  - { key: F8,                      chars: "\x1b[19~"                    }
  - { key: F9,                      chars: "\x1b[20~"                    }
  - { key: F10,                     chars: "\x1b[21~"                    }
  - { key: F11,                     chars: "\x1b[23~"                    }
  - { key: F12,                     chars: "\x1b[24~"                    }
  - { key: Back,                    chars: "\x7f"                        }
  - { key: Delete,                  chars: "\x1b[3~",  mode: AppKeypad   }
  - { key: Delete,                  chars: "\x1b[P",   mode: ~AppKeypad  }

[gmile]

I would add that that changing language via Cmd Space while in alacritty also doesn't work in macOS.

[jonhoo]

FWIW, I've only noticed this in bash, and not in fish. Not sure what the difference there is..

[areading]

Also FWIW, the case for bash seems to depend on your readline settings. I too had the issue where Home/End didn't work properly (I don't use Alt-Left or Alt-Right), and fixed it by editing my ~/.inputrc. I added the lower two lines below -- you'll notice they correspond to the same sequence in the config, as well as the returned values from showkey -a:

$if Bash
"C-i":      beginning-of-line
"C-a":      end-of-line
"\e[1~":    beginning-of-line
"\e[4~":    end-of-line
$endif

[danyim]

@spacecowboy I added the following lines to support skipping words via Alt+Left and Alt+Right on macOS:

  - { key: Left,     mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1bb"                       } # Skip word left
  - { key: Right,    mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1bf"                       } # Skip word right
  - { key: Left,     mods: Command, chars: "\x1bOH",   mode: AppCursor   } # Home
  - { key: Right,    mods: Command, chars: "\x1bOF",   mode: AppCursor   } # End
  - { key: Back,     mods: Command, chars: "\x15"                        } # Delete line
  - { key: Back,     mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b\x7f"                    } # Delete word

(thanks to #93)

I'm still trying to figure out how to get Command+Left (home), Command+Right (End), Command+Delete (delete line) to work, however. (Edited)

EDIT (2021): Updated to include all macOS bindings.

[danyim]

I'm very close to getting the delete line (Cmd+Delete) working via this keybinding:

  - { key: Back,     mods: Command, chars: "\x1b[K",  mode: AppCursor  }

I know the value should be \x1b[2K because of what @jwilm mentioned here and the ANSI terminal escape sequence for delete line; however, it seems like this escape sequence isn't recognized. I've also tried \x1b[J.

Debugging via

- { key: Back,     mods: Command, chars: "foo",  mode: AppCursor  }

seems to print foo, so I'm almost certain it's the sequence.

Any ideas?

[voigt]

@spacecowboy I added the following lines to support skipping words via Alt+Left and Alt+Right on macOS:

  - { key: Left,     mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1bb"                       }
  - { key: Right,    mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1bf"                       }
  - { key: Left,     mods: Command, chars: "\x1bOH",   mode: AppCursor   } # Home
  - { key: Right,    mods: Command, chars: "\x1bOF",   mode: AppCursor   } # End

(thanks to #93)

I'm still trying to figure out how to get Command+Left (home), Command+Right (End), Command+Delete (delete line) to work, however. (Edited)

Worked perfectly for me. However, I needed to uncomment following lines as they would overwrite the settings:

#  - { key: Left,     mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b[1;3D"                   }
#  - { key: Right,    mods: Alt,     chars: "\x1b[1;3C"                   }

[chrisduerr]

@spacecowboy I've just tested this and Alacritty behaves exactly the same way as XTerm. Is this still an issue?

[spacecowboy]

Seems to be fixed on latest master

…

On 23 March 2019 12:26:41 CET, Christian Duerr ***@***.***> wrote: @spacecowboy I've just tested this and Alacritty behaves exactly the same way as XTerm. Is this still an issue? -- You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #474 (comment)

[spacecowboy]

Closing since it's no longer reproducible

[chrisduerr]

Thanks for the update!

[Empty2k12]

@danyim Did you ever figure out delete line (CMD+Backspace)?

[lemeb]

Can reproduce the bug here, just after I installed Alacritty on my Mac (Catalina beta).

Kickass work though! Really impressive :)

[kchibisov]

@lemeb Are you on master or on latest release? It should be fixed on master.

[lemeb]

I was on the latest release!

[kchibisov]

@lemeb so, Is it working for you on the latest master? You can launch cat and type Alt+Left/Alt+Down and so on, you should see something like this.

^[[1;3D^[[1;3B^[[1;3A^[[1;3C[[1;3F^[[1;3H

Also, try launching alacritty --config-file /dev/null to test if your configuration is the issue here.

[lemeb]

can confirm that it works :)

EDIT: @kchibisov Doesn't work.

• I reinstalled alacritty by using the cargo install method. (My version is alacritty 0.3.3 (24651a6)).
• cat and Alt-Left/Alt-Down did print out the characters you indicated.
• If I type a command (say, echo -e "\e[1mbold\e[0m"), and I try to move the cursor to the previous/next work with Alt-Left/Alt-Down, the terminal prints the last letter of the ANSI Code (D, B, A, C, and so on).
• My key bindings are squeaky clean. I guess I'll have to use the alternative key bindings again!

Thanks :)

[danyim]

@danyim Did you ever figure out delete line (CMD+Backspace)?
Yep!

    # Delete line
  - { key: Back,     mods: Command, chars: "\x15"                       }

There are now "quality of life" keybindings on the official docs which include these: https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty/wiki/Keyboard-mappings#macos