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I am using Arch Linux with Sway and a pseudoterminal which is currently termite.

Typically inside of that I am running tmux and then vim inside of tmux.

My problem is that I cannot get ctrl+1 or alt+1 key bindings to work or ctrl+shift+1 etc.

I tried creating a binding in tmux like this (in the tmux conf):

bind -n C-1 send-keys -X "xzy whatever"

but it did not work. How can I get these kinds of bindings to work?

I notice that I can get ctrl bindings to work if I define them in the sway config, but I do not want to try to make vim commands defined in my sway config.

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Graphical applications receive keystrokes as key combinations (such as ctrl1 is sent as 1 with the ctrl modifier key held) but applications running in a terminal instead receive single byte codes (ascii), where ctrl can only be combined with letters and a few symbols (@[\]^_) (see man ascii).

The only way to be able to bind to those key combinations would be to use a graphical version of the application (e.g., graphical emacs, maybe graphical vim) or have the graphical terminal translate it via a macro if it supported that.

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  • But see also: invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.faq.html#xterm_modother : terminal can be told to send C-1 as a special sequence. And possibly vim support it, but OP as also a tmux.... things may be more complex, but possibly solvable Commented Oct 31, 2024 at 15:36
  • Yes, some of the ctrl codes overlap with special keys and are indistinguishable to terminal apps, and some special keys emit multiple characters. I considered covering that but thought that was a bit out of scope for the question. I don't think tmux really changes any of this since it's just another terminal app and passes through most stuff. Commented Nov 1, 2024 at 11:24

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