[Integrated Terminal] Allow ctrl+backspace to delete entire word in cmd.exe

[connorskees]

Within the integrated terminal using cmd.exe, I'd like to be able to use ctrl+backspace in order to delete an entire word, as can be done in the regular editor. ctrl+backspace does work inside powershell, but not when using cmd.exe.

This is currently possible within the new Windows Terminal as well as the "old" Windows 10 terminal,
microsoft/terminal#755

[RMacfarlane]

@Tyriar I'm still seeing ctrl+backspace deleting single characters in cmd.exe in the latest insiders. When usering powershell, I see ^W inserted after text on ctrl+backspace. The only terminal related setting I have set is "terminal.integrated.shell.windows" and I don't have any other keybindings set for ctrl+backspace

[connorskees]

@RMacfarlane I am unable to reproduce the deletion of single characters in cmd.exe or ^W in powershell. The behavior for powershell in particular seems strange -- I believe powershell accepts both ctrl+h and ctrl+w for deletion of an entire word.

Your description of the behavior appears to be the same as that prior to #98494; however, cmd.exe and powershell seem flipped. I would think that it would be cmd.exe emitting ^W and powershell simply deleting a single character.

Since #98494 was merged, I have been seeing the correct behavior in code-insiders. It is strange that your version seems to be without the change.

1.48.0-insider
5696babbc1dce41788bae04b1a04ad35140bebfb
x64

Is ^W still inserted for you after unfocusing and refocusing the terminal? Within the original pull request,

I was unable to get around an issue in which the keybinding would not register for cmd.exe until the user unfocuses the terminal, either by clicking out of it, closing it (ctrl+backtick), or minimizing vscode. It only occurs when there are two bindings to the key -- when removing the other (^W) binding this issue no longer occurs.

In practice I do occasionally run into this. This should only ever affect cmd.exe -- I have never had it occur for either wsl2 or powershell. I am not sure if there is a good solution for this. The difficulty here is supporting both cmd.exe and WSL. It seems even microsoft/terminal does not correctly delete a whole word for WSL, though it does for cmd.exe and powershell.

I suppose the issue here is more related to how keybindings are handled in that when there is a collision of bindings and one version is conditionally based on the currently focused shell, it requires one to unfocus the terminal for it to take effect.

[gvanrossum]

I get this too. I see it both in powershell and in the python REPL running in powershell.

[Tyriar]

@gvanrossum you might be on an older version of powershell? pwsh 7 works for me. For python, created #114919

[nt4f04uNd]

In Windows Terminal this works regardless of the backend, i.e. it works in python, CMD, whatever

[Tyriar]

@nt4f04uNd I believe Windows Terminal sends actual keystrokes via the Windows native console API for these which would be handled correctly, whereas we want to avoid treating the communication with the underlying process on Windows specially.

[lf-novelt]

ctrl+backspace does not work for me in either VS Code or VS Code insider integrated terminal "cmd.exe"
I'd tried to override the default keybinding by

    {
        "key": "ctrl+backspace",
        "command": "workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence",
        "when": "terminalFocus && terminalShellType == 'cmd'",
        "args": {
            "text": "\u0017"
        }
    }

but it produces ^W output instead of deleting the word.

By default, it simply deletes 1 character.

Please help, it's unbearable to not being able to delete a whole word, should be a built-in behavior of any terminal tool, not sure why it has been marked "out of scope"

[Tyriar]

@lf-novelt there is a default keybinding for cmd and it works fine for me:

You may need to update Windows if it's not working for you?

[lf-novelt]

just updated Windows (Version 10.0.19045.3636), no more update to do -> same issue (it works well in regular cmd.exe, but not in VSCode)

however I see this suspicious output in the keybinding troubleshooting log -> Ignoring single modifier ctrl due to it being pressed together with other keys.