Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

4
  • So what does this mean for Meta sequences like M-#? Or are they not subject to the same restrictions? Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 7:49
  • Meta-# is by convention an escape control character followed by # (or whatever character you want to "metafy"). The Readline library can also be configured to interpret the eight bit, if set, as a meta flag if the terminal (emulator) supports this. But this is very esoteric, since it restricts the input character set to seven bits. Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 8:10
  • Are there limitations on which characters can be "metafied"? M-/ doesn't seem to work for me either. Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 9:11
  • For some reason I can't get the syntax "\M-/" to work in .inputrc either, but "\e/": "your action here" works. In my terminal emulator combining the Alt key with almost any key prepends an Esc to the key character. You can check by pressing Ctrl-v before the Alt-key combination, this prints the output like this: ^[/ (Alt-/ used as an example). Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 15:28