CTRL+A does not work

[damemonyo]

CTRL+A does not work anyway. I examined this issue on bash prompt and emacs in bash window.

[B0073D]

I tried this after sshing into a server too, with no effect. So I'd suggest the CMD window is possibly 'catching' ctrl+a and not passing it to the shell.

[dschaefer]

Any thoughts on a workaround. I'm guess CMD too, but can't see how to disable it if that's possible. If not that's a big hit for emacs lovers like myself.

[ophiry]

I'm not sure it's related to CMD
cygwin does support CTRL+A
when executing bash from withing cygwin, CTRL+A doesn't work

[takekazuomi]

By default Ctrl + A is select all text in the current line the Command Prompt. I disabled ctrl key shortcuts from Command Prompt menu. But still CTRL+A doesn't work.

[zadjii-msft]

I'm gonna tag @dethoma and @russalex on this. We've been looking at this for a while, and I'm still not exactly certain where the problem is. I know that all of the Ctrl+ characters are translated (NOT intercepted) by the console window successfully on their way down to the subsystem, but I'm not sure why specifically Ctrl+A (SOH, \x01) doesn't seem to make it out of the subsystem.

[sunilmut]

Thanks for your feedback. Support for CTRL+A has been added in the code but the build has not made it to flighting yet.

[takekazuomi]

It works fine on 14332. Thank you !

[prasannavl]

@sunilmut

It works great on WSL now. But this is still an issue while running on Cygwin. conhost seems to be catching Ctrl+A, and selecting everything. Is there any generic way to switch this off, for instances like using it with Cygwin? I'm curious to know how the recent builds switch it off only for WSL.

[michielwittkampf]

I'am on build 15063.726 (regular release).

CTRL-A doesn't do anything in a Bash on Ubuntu on Windows window.

Anyone else?

[zadjii-msft]

@michielwittkampf I'm gonna need some more info -

• what keyboard layout are you using?
• Is there an specific application that C-a doesn't work in?
  • Does C-v, C-a from the bash commandline echo ^A to the input?
  • What does pressing C-h, k, C-a in emacs display? (scerenshot would be helpful)
• What are the contents of your /etc/inputrc file?

[relston]

@zadjii-msft I seem to be having this same issue on my Ubuntu WSL Bash prompt.
Normal keyboard layout (not sure what exactly you are asking, using a Surface 2 Laptop).
All bash shells for my WSL setup has this issue if I simply want to copy all the test in the terminal.

C-c copies correctly. C-v does not paste (get a ^V) every time I try to paste. C-Shift-C and C-Shift-V work as expected. C-a does nothing.
Funny thing is that the 'Select-All' from the edit menu works as expected:

Not sure if this matters but all of the ctrl commands work as expected in cmd

As for the /etc/inputrc here you go:

# /etc/inputrc - global inputrc for libreadline
# See readline(3readline) and `info rluserman' for more information.

# Be 8 bit clean.
set input-meta on
set output-meta on

# To allow the use of 8bit-characters like the german umlauts, uncomment
# the line below. However this makes the meta key not work as a meta key,
# which is annoying to those which don't need to type in 8-bit characters.

# set convert-meta off

# try to enable the application keypad when it is called.  Some systems
# need this to enable the arrow keys.
# set enable-keypad on

# see /usr/share/doc/bash/inputrc.arrows for other codes of arrow keys

# do not bell on tab-completion
# set bell-style none
# set bell-style visible

# some defaults / modifications for the emacs mode
$if mode=emacs
# allow the use of the Home/End keys
"\e[1~": beginning-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line

# allow the use of the Delete/Insert keys
"\e[3~": delete-char
"\e[2~": quoted-insert

# mappings for "page up" and "page down" to step to the beginning/end
# of the history
# "\e[5~": beginning-of-history
# "\e[6~": end-of-history

# alternate mappings for "page up" and "page down" to search the history
# "\e[5~": history-search-backward
# "\e[6~": history-search-forward

# mappings for Ctrl-left-arrow and Ctrl-right-arrow for word moving
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[5C": forward-word
"\e[5D": backward-word
"\e\e[C": forward-word
"\e\e[D": backward-word

$if term=rxvt
"\e[7~": beginning-of-line
"\e[8~": end-of-line
"\eOc": forward-word
"\eOd": backward-word
$endif

# for non RH/Debian xterm, can't hurt for RH/Debian xterm
# "\eOH": beginning-of-line
# "\eOF": end-of-line

# for freebsd console
# "\e[H": beginning-of-line
# "\e[F": end-of-line

$endif

Hope this is helpful. Would love to find a solution to this because VS Code integrated terminal has the same issues. I don't have alt menus to work with there.

[zadjii-msft]

Wait, are you expecting Ctrl-A to select all text, or to send a Ctrl-A to the commandline application that's running (e.g. bash)?