Bash's "set -o vi" vs readline's own options?

Question

I know there is, for readline,

set editing-mode vi

You can put the above option in ~/.inputrc, editing-mode is documented by Readline as

editing-mode (emacs) Controls whether readline begins with a set of key bindings similar to emacs or vi. editing-mode can be set to either emacs or vi.

There is also, for Bash,

set -o vi

According to the Bash documents

vi Use a vi-style line editing interface. This also affects the editing interface used for read -e.

Does Bash's -o vi do anything other than set the appropriate Readline mode? And, if you've already got editing-mode set in your ~/.inputrc does this do anything differently?

Answer 1

The two are identical.

Doing set -o vi in an interactive bash shell calls the set builtin. The C code for the set builtin calls rl_variable_bind("editing-mode", option_name) (where option_name will be vi) which is the Readline library function that sets the command line editing mode.

Setting the command line editing mode on the command line with set -o in the bash shell would override the corresponding setting configured in ~/.inputrc.

Setting the editing mode in ~/.inputrc would set it as the default command line editing mode for any application using the Readline library.